Al Gore: The Artful Dodger

According to a piece by Bonner R. Cohen in TCS Daily, it seems that Al Gore, aka the Goracle and the widely renowned inventor of the Internet*, has been dodging challenges by qualified experts to debate him on his pet issue: "global warming." Wonder if this incident has prompted Gore's radio silence on this non-issue:

Gore's reluctance to go toe-to-toe with global warming skeptics may have something to do with the - from the standpoint of climate change alarmists - unfortunate outcome of a global warming debate in New York last March. In the debate, a team of global warming skeptics composed of MIT scientist Richard Lindzen, University of London emeritus professor of biogeology Philip Stott, and physician-turned novelist/filmmaker Michael Crichton handily defeated a team of climate alarmists headed by NASA scientist Gavin Schmidt. Before the start of the nearly two-hour debate, the audience of several thousand polled 57.3 percent to 29.9 percent in favor of the proposition that global warming is a "crisis." At the end of the debate, the numbers had changed dramatically, with 46.2 percent favoring the skeptical point of view and 42.2 percent siding with the alarmists.

Doesn't take long for the experts to shoot down this kind of mass hysteria, does it? Like all Stalinists, Gore can't deal with science and logic, and so takes great care to make his photo-ops and personal appearances only at guaranteed friendly venues where he can avoid hostile questions. Like all the Stalinist bullies, he prefers to denounce and belittle those who differ from him from afar. He knows he can't stand up to their arguments in person.

Czech Republic president Vaclav Klaus knows what's really going on here. And he had ought to, having lived under an oppressive Communist puppet regime for much of his life:

President Klaus has not minced words on what he sees as the real agenda of those promoting climate hysteria. In an op-ed in the Financial Times (June 13, pointedly titled "Freedom, Not Climate, is at Risk," Klaus said: "Let us not scare ourselves with catastrophic forecasts, or use them to defend and promote irrational interventions in human lives." Arguing that the issue of global warming "is more about social than about natural sciences and more about man and his freedom than about tenths of a degree Celsius changes in average global temperature," Klaus rejected the notion of a "scientific consensus" on climate change as an effort by a "loud minority" to impose its will on a "silent majority."

However, Klaus reserved his unkindest cut of all for the movement that has joined forces with Gore is spreading fear about global warming:

"As someone who lived under communism for most of his life, I feel obliged to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning." [Italics provided by HazZzMat.]

By the way, both of HazZzMat's commentators are news junkies. Why did we miss entirely last spring's global climate debate? Could the MSM possibly not have reported it widely? Naaaah.

**ADDENDUM: For more on this, see our later blog entry.