It's been a tough stretch for enviro-alarmist Al Gore. First video surfaces of him being questioned at a speech about inaccuracies and errors in his horror documentary An Inconvenient Truth. Then the PETA folks come after him. Back story: apparently a study has shown that the carbon cost of raising livestock from birth to your dinner plate is far higher than that of tooling around in our SUVs. PETA's challenge to Gore: become a vegetarian. Finally, Gore is reported (NYT 11/3/2009) to have made millions of dollars investing in various alternative energy ventures. At RedStateVT, we love capitalism and applaud those who have achieved financial success. But doesn't it seem just a bit dishonest that Gore has used his bully pulpit to champion a controversial cause for immense personal financial gain?
For those who want an historical view of climate change and weather patterns RedStateVT recommends: The Great Warming, Climate Change and the Rise and Fall of Civilizations by Brian Fagan, 2008, Bloomsbury Press. Fagan meticulously documents the effects on culture and civilization of a naturally occurring warming during the medieval period (800 - 1300AD). RedStateVT is fairly certain that there were no automobiles then, and yet miraculously there was a significant increase in temperature which led to both drought and famine in some areas and thawing and increased agricultural production in other places. We have always thought it unfathomable that the enviro-crowd apparently believes that humankind is entitled to constant and predictable weather.
Global cooling over the last decade has the Global Warming crowd discombobulated. So much so that they even changed the name of their project - from "Global Warming" to "Climate Change."
ReplyDeleteGlobal Warming once maintained a thin veneer of credibility. After all, the globe did warm for two and half decades - enough to cause significant erosion of the artic ice cap. The industrial revolution did release a colossal amount of greenhouse gases - and we all know that greenhouses are hot. There was a certain amount of logic to the theory of man-made global warming.
A bunch of really smart scientists created climate models which demonstated a distinct correlation between mankind's relentless pursuit of the good life with the disturbing decline of polar bear populations. Who could argue with all these smart guys? They had the models and the models said that the Earth's warming was caused by high levels of CO2.
The models also forcasted that the warming trends were rapidly accelerating and that climatic disaster awaited us in a decade unless we mended our ways. Well, that was a decade ago and we all know what happened.
Al Gore has no clothes...but he does have a nice houseboat.