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The Strange World of Al Gore There have been many times in his long public career when I have wondered whether Al Gore is just plain stupid or, as the British say, barking mad. At some point, his neighbors and fellow Tennessee citizens must have concluded Gore was intellectually defective because, in his run for the presidency in 2000, he failed to get that State’s plurality. Maybe it had something to do with that long, long, long kiss he gave Tipper before accepting the nomination of his party? That was bizarre.
Gore, however, bestrides the world making speeches and documentaries, and writing books while the rest of us give thanks he no longer has access to the power public office bestows. Indeed, in general, Al Gore is an object of ridicule, but that does not release us from the obligation to actually think about what he is doing and saying. As this is written, his documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth", is nominated for an Oscar, the highest award Hollywood gives. It puts forth as fact that Greenland’s glaciers are melting, that deaths from global warming "will double in the next 25 years", and that global sea levels could rise by more than 20 feet, "devastating coastal areas worldwide." Everything from hurricanes to Malaria is blamed on global warming. Wild speculation substitutes for science. It’s stupid. What is obscene, however, is the widespread effort to insure that students in schools, not just in the United States, but elsewhere, are exposed to this stinking pile of pseudo-science. In terms of a sudden, dramatic rise in global average temperatures, Global Warming is not happening and with known climate cycles, extremely unlikely. The Earth is, in fact, nearing the end of an inter-glacial period and on the cusp of a new Ice Age. There is no known or provable science that supports his endless Global Warming-related claims. And that is the inconvenient truth about Gore’s apocalyptic documentary. We’re informed, too, that Al Gore has been nominated to receive a Nobel Peace Prize. Alone among the other Nobel Prizes for economics, literature or medicine, the Peace Prize lost its credibility after it was given to a notorious terrorist, Yassir Arafat, and now a notorious anti-Semite, former President Jimmy Carter, whose center in Atlanta has been underwritten with great gobs of money from oil-rich Middle East sheiks. In a similar fashion, in February 2006 Gore addressed an audience in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, saying that the U.S. government had committed "terrible abuses" against Arabs in America who he claimed were "indiscriminately rounded up." He lamented the handling of Saudi visa applications, apparently having forgot that most of the 9-ll hijackers were Saudis. The truth is that 10,000 Saudis are attending our universities. As to Iran’s announced intention to make nuclear weapons, Gore asked, "Is it only for the West to say this is dangerous?" Iran’s neighbors, however, think it is dangerous too. In one speech he managed to bash the United States and ignore what most rational people think is the greatest threat to peace since the rise of the Nazi regime. Now say to yourself "President Al Gore." Scary, isn’t it? What Al Gore wants all of us to do, aside from destroying America’s thriving economy with a system of greenhouse gas emission caps-and-credits, is to make major, personal lifestyle sacrifices and changes. Gore says we just consume too much of everything. However, as USA Today pointed out in August of 2006, "he and his wife Tipper live in two properties: a 10,000-square-foot, 20-room, eight-bathroom home in Nashville, and a 4,000-square-foot home in Arlington, VA." He also has a third home in Carthage, Tennessee. To get to and from his highly paid lectures, he uses jets that consume vast amounts of fossil fuel derivatives. Can you spell h-y-p-o-c-r-i-t-e? We expect this kind of behavior from politicians and, except for a brief stint as a journalist, that’s what Al Gore has been his whole life. One need only consult his bestseller, "Earth in the Balance: Ecology and the Human Spirit" to realize that Gore has harbored some very strange and moronic ideas for a long time. My favorite is his expressed hope that "the strategic goal of completely eliminating the internal combustion engine" could be achieved in "say, a twenty-five year period." Given that the book was originally published in 1992, we are just a decade shy of that goal. In case you’re not familiar with the internal combustion engine, it can be found under the hood of every automobile and truck in the world! Back in 1992, Gore’s book expressed the view that "The stunning victory of free market economics over communism in the global war of ideas has brought with it a new obligation to change those features of our economic philosophy that we know are flawed in the light of the ecological destruction they legitimize, and even encourage." There was nothing "stunning" about it. Even Communists knew their economic system was idiotic. China has been in the process of abandoning it since Mao died. The victory over communism included a forty-year Cold War and, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the world discovered that Soviet communism included some of the worst environmental abuses ever witnessed. So, apparently communism was bad, but capitalism is worse. This is why environmentalists are called "watermelons"; green on the outside and red on the inside. Gore is no exception to this. This is also why the aim of environmentalism is to gain control over the use of the world’s energy resources because to do so would mean control over the lives of everyone on Earth. Right now, the Democrats who control Congress are doing everything in their power to enact legislation to fulfill Al Gore’s dream. Even some stupid Republicans support this. As far as Al Gore is concerned, "one doesn’t have to travel around the world to witness humankind’s assault on the earth." In the world according to Gore, it isn’t just capitalism that’s to blame, it is the whole of humanity. In the philosophy of Deep Ecology, if the Earth can just be rid of human beings, it will return to some lost Eden, some paradise of just animals and insects. This hatred of humanity, of civilization, of industrialization, of expanding frontiers of science and technology lies at the heart of Al Gore’s philosophy. Is this insane or just stupid? Either way, it does not merit a Nobel Prize or an Oscar. And it is contagious. Gore’s moronic embrace of Global Warming is widely accepted even in the face of raging blizzards in Colorado, frozen orange crops in California, and chill conditions throughout the Midwest and Northeast. The cold weather elsewhere in the world is called "winter." Despite obvious and empirical evidence to the contrary, some people keep insisting the Earth is filled with signs of a sudden and calamitous warming. I suggest that Gore’s life has been filled with signs of stupidity and his rabid embrace of Global Warming has the appearance of a serious delusion. It is one that poses a great danger for humanity. The National Anxiety Center is seeking donors who can financially secure our programs over the long term in ways that individual, smaller donors do not. The Center does not seek foundation grants in order to remain totally independent. In the meantime, any donation remains very welcome and very appreciated. Throw a Net Over Nancy Pelosi! Let’s see if we can come up with some important priorities for the security of the United States and the growth of its economy. Well, number one is surely the protection the nation against any further attacks by Islamist fundamentalists. Clearly this has been successful to date. It will remain, however, a constant concern for decades to come. Another priority would be to insure that the nation continues to have the energy it requires to maintain and grow our thriving economy. We use a lot of electricity and our cars and trucks use a lot of fuel, as do our fleets of aircraft. The result is the movement of goods in, around, and out of the nation in an era of global trade. The agricultural sector needs electricity and fuel as well. It needs access to irrigation, fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides to protect crops. So what does Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, think is the nation’s highest priority?
Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. The greatest fools of all are those running around these days shouting, "Global Warming! Global Warming! Global Warming!" Most of these people are relatively harmless because they do not have their hand on the lever of governmental power, but Speaker Pelosi is literally in the line of succession to the Oval Office. In her announcement, she claimed that, "catastrophic hurricanes of 2005, Katrina and Rita, foreshadow the challenges we face." The lowliest government meteorologist could tell her there is no connection between hurricanes and so-called Global Warming. He might even remind her that, in 2006, not one single hurricane made landfall; another one of those inconvenient facts. Instead, Speaker Pelosi conjured up "rising sea levels and intensifying storms." If that wasn’t bad enough, she threw in "inland communities (that) will be gravely affected as well by drought and flood." Wait a minute, how can the IPCC report summary predict both droughts, the absence of water, and floods, too much water, at the same time? To be fair, the planet is a very big place where there can be drought in one place and floods in another. It can and is also icy cold in one place and desiccating desert heat in another. There can be monsoons in India and balmy skies in Argentina. In short, the planet’s climate at any given hour of any day is one of constant diversity. That’s why the scare mongers prefer to use the term "climate change" instead of Global Warming whenever possible. Only an idiot would not know that the climate, i.e., temperature, is always changing, both seasonally and from morning to night. Speaker Pelosi, however, believes the United States must "prevent catastrophic global warming." The day before her announcement, however, the noted economist and Washington Post columnist, Robert Samuelson, wrote, "The dirty secret about global warming is this: We have no solution." While predicting that worldwide emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) will increase as more developing nations access energy ("In Africa, less than 40 percent of the population even has electricity."), Samuelson is not ready to panic. Global warming, he said, "has been a change, not a calamity." Pretty smart for an economist who probably knows that longer periods in which to grow crops that thrive on CO2 might actually be a good thing. Good, too, for the forests and jungles that absorb CO2 and given off oxygen. As for Speaker Pelosi’s mad dash to impose "cap and trade" programs to control greenhouse gas emissions, Samuelson said, "in practice, no plausible ‘cap and trade’ program would significantly curb global warming. To do that, quotas would have to be set so low as to shut down the economy." Let me repeat that, "shut down the economy." If that doesn’t scare you, how about "the costs of scarce quotas would skyrocket—and be passed along to consumers through much higher energy prices. The program would be a regulatory burden with little benefit." Speaker Pelosi is a Democrat. That means more government regulation even if it based on something entirely controlled by the action of the Sun, the oceans, clouds, volcanoes, and other natural phenomena. Regulation that would limit and harm the economy. There is no threat of massive, sudden, dramatic Global Warming. Not happening. Not going to happen. Will someone please find a net and throw it over Nancy Pelosi? Have you made a donation to the Center? If you can, please do. Thanks. If you would prefer to send a check, please make it payable to The Caruba Organization, 28 West Third Street, Suite 1321, South Orange, NJ 07079.
©
2007 Alan Caruba. |
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No one wants to admit that they may have voted for someone who is seriously stupid. Those who voted for Bush may have misgivings, but at least he does not go around saying the world is coming to an end from global warming while the nation and large parts of the globe are in the grip of bone-chilling cold and deep drifts of snow and ice.
In an announcement on Thursday, February 8, she made it clear that Global Warming is her highest priority. Citing the utterly bogus scare mongering of the Fourth Assessment Report of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Speaker Pelosi has seen the future and it is one that "will reshape our planet and society. We also see a future in which harsh consequences could be blunted by our prompt action."