‘He Betrayed Us! He Played on our Fears!’ — Al Gore — A Convenient Crisis — But Don’t Look at His Carbon Footprint

By Mick Gregory

Editor’s note: I know the pressure that professors and journalists are under to follow the doctrine of their “profession.” In my case, I don’t care, I’m not attempting to talk the PC talk to impress editors for a $70,000 a year job of pumping out AP-style clap-trap following the progressive agenda of “global warming,” “Republicans bad,” “Democrats good,” and “It takes a village.”

UPDATE FROM DRUDGE: GORE MANSION USES 20 Times the ENERGY OF AN AVERAGE HOUSEHOLD; CONSUMPTION INCREASED AFTER RELEASE OF “AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH.”

The Tennessee Center for Policy Research, an independent, nonprofit and nonpartisan research organization committed to achieving a freer, more prosperous Tennessee through free market policy solutions, issued a press release late Monday:

Last night, Al Gore’s global-warming documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, collected an Oscar for best documentary feature, but the Tennessee Center for Policy Research has found that Gore deserves a gold statue for hypocrisy.

Gore’s mansion, [20-room, eight-bathroom] located in the posh Belle Meade area of Nashville, consumes more electricity every month than the average American household uses in an entire year, according to the Nashville Electric Service (NES).

In his documentary, the former Vice President calls on Americans to conserve energy by reducing electricity consumption at home.

The average household in America consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours (kWh) per year, according to the Department of Energy. In 2006, Gore devoured nearly 221,000 kWh—more than 20 times the national average.

Last August alone, Gore burned through 22,619 kWh—guzzling more than twice the electricity in one month than an average American family uses in an entire year. As a result of his energy consumption, Gore’s average monthly electric bill topped $1,359.

Since the release of An Inconvenient Truth, Gore’s energy consumption has increased from an average of 16,200 kWh per month in 2005, to 18,400 kWh per month in 2006.

Gore’s extravagant energy use does not stop at his electric bill. Natural gas bills for Gore’s mansion and guest house averaged $1,080 per month last year.

“As the spokesman of choice for the global warming movement, Al Gore has to be willing to walk to walk, not just talk the talk, when it comes to home energy use,” said Tennessee Center for Policy Research President Drew Johnson.

In total, Gore paid nearly $30,000 in combined electricity and natural gas bills for his Nashville estate in 2006.

For Further Information, Contact:
Nicole Williams, (615) 383-6431
editor@tennesseepolicy.org

I felt a little sorry for “AlGore” last night. Didn’t you? His weight has ballooned, I think he must be nearly 300 pounds and his wife who used to promote Hollywood sanctions on content, is back on the A list. Hollywood gave his PowerPoint presentation that was jazzed up with glaciers sliding into the ocean and a dead bird here and there an Academy Award. I don’t think great directors Robert Altman or David Lynch have ever won one. Gulfstream jets flying “leaders” coast-to-coast for black tie events and political fund raisers, while the little working people should be taking mass transit to work every day. That’s the Progressive Democrat vision for America.

Didn’t Gore’s comments seem sheepish, trite and stiff? And why isn’t he running for president as the jokes all night suggested? I’m guessing that the Clinton machine told Gore he can’t run for president. That the donation machine will not be turned on for his campaign. Clinton may have said: “It’s Hillary/Obama’s race, you came close, but no cigar…. catch my drift?”

Another professor who says that Al Gore’s movie is a bunch of dumb-downed science. He appeared on the Dennis Prager show last week, and Prager promised that the transcript will be up at Prager’s Townhall.com site.

Remember when the VP AlGore came out and started his Moveon.org days by yelling to a crowd of fanatics that “He Betrayed Us! He Played on Our Fears!”

Well that is exactly what Gore is doing. Pure scare, propaganda. Pure nonsense. It’s targeted to the liberal masses with a hate toward the free market and free choice democracy we have in America.

Did you see AlGore’s book yet? It’s a picture book filled with images from his movie.

“The greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda. Perceiving the truth has always been a challenge to mankind, but in the information age (or as I think of it, the disinformation age) it takes on a special urgency and importance.”
Michael Crichton, Science writer and author ‘State of Fear’.

And yet another reputable scientist is willing to stand up to Gore. Professor Giegengack of Penn State now has seen enough of the political nonsense:

There’s no way to watch “An Inconvenient Truth” without getting worried — at least a little worried.
Not Bob Giegengack. He has described Al Gore’s documentary as “a political statement timed to present him as a presidential candidate in 2008.” And he added, “The glossy production is replete with inaccuracies and misrepresentations, and appeals to public fear as shamelessly as any other political statement that hopes to unite the public behind a particular ideology.” This from a guy who voted for Gore in 2000 and says he’d probably vote for him again.

He has another idea about why climate change happens:

The Earth has been warming for about 20,000 years. We’ve only been collecting data on that trend for about 200 years. “For most of Earth’s history,” he said, “the globe has been warmer than it has been for the last 200 years. It has only rarely been cooler.” Those cooler periods have meant things like two miles of ice piled over much of what is now North America. Nothing to be nostalgic for.
The professor hits a button on his computer, and the really long-term view appears — the past 650,000 years. In that time, the Earth’s temperature has gone through regular cycles of rise and fall. The best explanation of those cycles was conceived by a Serbian amateur scientist named Milutin Milankovi´c. Very basically, Milankovi´c said this: The Earth’s orbit around the sun is more or less circular, but when other planets align in certain ways and their gravitational forces tug at the Earth, the orbit stretches into a more elliptical shape. Combined with the tilt of the Earth on its axis as it spins, that greater or lesser distance from the sun, plus the consequent difference in solar radiation that reaches our planet, is responsible for long-term climate change.

Those who question the environmental orthodoxy are treated harshly, where do you think funding comes from? This is why they don’t speak up very often. It only causes trouble, and the activists don’t really care about the science, anyway.

NOW TO THE ROOT OF THE AlGore argument — the idea that rising carbon dioxide levels are causing an increase in temperature.

To determine temperatures and carbon dioxide levels in the distant past, scientists rely on what they call the “proxy record.” There weren’t thermometers. So researchers drill deep down into the Antarctic ice sheet and the ocean floor and pull up core samples, whose varying chemical elements let them gauge both the CO2 levels and the temperatures of the distant past.

The scientist clicks a button, and three charts come together. The peaks and valleys of the Milankovi´c cycles for planetary temperature align well with the ocean-floor estimates, and those match closely the records of carbon dioxide concentrations and temperature indications from ice cores. So, the professor maintains, these core samples from the polar ice and ocean floor help show that the Earth’s temperature and the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have been in lockstep for tens of thousands of years.

Of course, that was long before anybody was burning fossil fuels. So Giegengack tells his students they might want to consider that “natural” climatic temperature cycles control carbon dioxide levels, not the other way around. That’s the crux of his argument with Gore’s view of global warming — he says carbon dioxide doesn’t control global temperature, and certainly not in a direct, linear way.

Giegengack has a lot of slides is his show too. He points out that within his lifetime, there was a three-decade period of unusually low temperatures that culminated in the popular consciousness with the awful winter of 1976-77. Back then, scientists started sounding the alarm about a new Ice Age.

Of course, it’s long been thought that the world would end either in fire or in ice. These days, the scientists are shouting fire. And in all his years around environmental issues, Giegengack has never heard so much shouting. “I don’t think we’re going to have a rational discussion of this question in the present environment,” he says. “The scientists are mad because they think nobody in Washington is listening to them. So it’s all either apocalyptic disaster or conflict of interest. If you suggest that we’re not going to hell in a handbasket because the rate of global warming is low compared to so many other environmental issues that we’re enduring, then you’re accused of being in the employ of the oil companies and you’re labeled a Republican.”

AlGore’s mission is propaganda. He REFUSES TO DEBATE with those who know what is going on. No, he is in the middle of a political campaign.

He GOES ON OPRAH:

The show turns out to be pretty much a synopsis of An Inconvenient Truth, with Gore clicking through his hyper-produced PowerPoint program and Oprah exclaiming “Wow! Wow!” with dramatic concern.
And no, this is not one of those people who are in the employ of the Republicans:

To dramatize the melting of the floating ice cap at the North Pole, Gore has inserted an animated clip of a polar bear swimming desperately to a tiny ice floe that isn’t strong enough to hold him. Global warming is drowning helpless bears. Oprah thinks it’s the coolest and saddest thing in Gore’s whole movie. Giegebgeck starts shouting:
“We don’t know that. We don’t know that! We don’t know that polar bears haven’t drowned in every interglacial period. Nobody was watching them back then.”

It’s got to be a frustrating experience, seeing a topic you’ve spent some 50 years studying turned into an Oprah episode. “I like her,” Gieg says. “She’d beat Al Gore if she ran for president.”

Then Gore clicks again to dramatic footage of a collapsing polar ice shelf. “That’s irresponsible,” Gieg says. “What he’s doing is no less than the scare tactics used by people like Karl Rove.”

But we must act soon! Before it is too late! We only have 3500 years to figure this thing out:

“Sea level is rising,” Giegengack agrees, switching off the sound. But, he explains, it’s been rising ever since warming set in 18,000 years ago. The rate of rise has been pretty slow — only about 400 feet so far. And recently — meaning in the thousands of years — the rate has slowed even more. The Earth’s global ocean level is only going up 1.8 millimeters per year. That’s less than the thickness of one nickel. For the catastrophe of flooded cities and millions of refugees that Gore envisions, sea levels would have to rise about 20 feet.
“At the present rate of sea-level rise,” Gieg says, “it’s going to take 3,500 years to get up there. So if for some reason this warming process that melts ice is cutting loose and accelerating, sea level doesn’t know it. And sea level, we think, is the best indicator of global warming.”

More:

“See,” Gieg says, “the thing he doesn’t mention is that there are 2.4 billion people in India and China who have launched a campaign that will increase their energy consumption by a factor of 10. No matter what we do. If we somehow cut our CO2 emissions in half, you wouldn’t be able to measure the difference because of the role played by India and China.
“It’s over. If CO2 is the problem, we’ve already lost.”

When Gieg gets to this point in his argument, as he often does when talking about global warming, he gets a little frustrated. “I always get sidetracked because, first of all, the science isn’t good. Second, there are all these other interpretations for what we see. Third, it doesn’t make any difference, and fourth, it’s distracting us from environmental problems that really matter.” Among those, Gieg says, are the millions of people a year who die from smoking and two million people a year who die because they don’t have access to clean water.

But no, the Democrats are going to get everyone wound up about global warming, which we really have about 10-50 years to figure out. In the meantime, those 2 million people will continue to die, year in, year out, while Democrats chase their tails, and make themselves feel moral.