Evidently, so are the legislators that need to heed his message on Human Induced Global Warming.
What do we know about 'the worries' we have for ourselves and our children?
We know issues like this are out of our control unless they are acted upon by government. We act to empower that government through the choices we make at an uncorrupted ballot box. When emergencies like this occur we expect our government leaders to take expert advise seriously and legislate to provide well being for us.
Write letters as a regular act of reassurance to the priorities your legislators need to take, but, in all honesty the people we have in office should be able to discern 'the truth' from 'corruption.' If they can't they don't deserve our confidence. Our confidence in our choices in leadership are vital to reduce 'the worries' of our life when government ignores our worries and acts in opposition to them.
No more negligence of the electorate and the Public Trust.
Published April 7, 2007
Al Gore, once held in disregard by friend and foe alike for his performance in the 2000 election, blew into Washington recently, trailing clouds of glory. His global warming film, "An Unpleasant Truth," had just won an Academy Award, his name was being mentioned for the Nobel Peace Prize and there was an incipient "Draft Gore" movement on the rise. Clothed in that suit of lights, he appeared before both House and Senate committees to tell them about — what else? — global warming.
"This is not a normal time," he said. "We are facing a planetary crisis."
He said that the global temperature increases, now foreseen by a consensus of scientists, would cause polar ice to melt, sea levels to rise dramatically, hurricanes to increase in devastation and wildfires and droughts to become more prevalent. Then he played the Thermopylae card, recalling the battle of 480 B.C. when a few hundred gallant Spartans stood against thousands of invading Persians in defense of Western civilization. If global warming could be stalled, he said, we could tell future generations: "This was our Thermopylae. We defended civilization's gate." (Forgetting perhaps that the Spartans lost the battle. Athens was burned.)
Never mind. The Democrats broke into virtual applause. The Republicans didn't.
Sen. James Inhofe, chairman of the Flat Earth caucus in the Senate, who has called global warming "the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people," said:
"It is my perspective that your global warming alarmist pronouncements are now and have always been filled with inaccuracies and misleading statements."
Gore, backed by a U.N.-sponsored study by climate experts around the world that has called the fact of global warming "unequivocal," simply brushed aside Inhofe's remarks.
"The planet has a fever," he said, citing statistics for the steady increase in average temperatures in recent years.
"If your baby has a fever, you go to the doctor. If the doctor says you need to intervene, you don't say, 'Well, I read a science fiction novel that tells me it's not a problem.'"
You could tell Inhofe was on the ropes because he played the icicle card, the last refuge of global-warming scoundrels. Holding up a picture of an icicle, he said:
"How come you guys never seem to notice it when it gets cold? Where's global warming when you really need it?"
He is either the three dumbest people in the Senate or a complete charlatan. Even his Republican colleagues were somewhat embarrassed by the anti-Gore arguments in the House and Senate.
"It's possible to be a conservative without appearing to be an idiot," said Rep. Bob Inglis of South Carolina, thus libeling idiots.
It was a very entertaining show. As Gore ended his Senate gig, he turned to committee chairperson Barbara Boxer of California and said:
"You don't give out any kind of statue or anything?"
And when former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert called him a "movie star" he responded with: "Rin Tin Tin was a movie star. I just have a slide show."
My heart, once hardened against him, is beginning to melt like the polar ice cap. Gore has the facts on his side. While that is seldom crucial in guiding congressional debates, these are so one-sided as to be inexorable.
The U.N. survey was conducted by the Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change, made up of hundreds of climate scientists from 113 countries and based on six years of research. They all agreed on the finding. There is no escaping its conclusions. And its general conclusion is that even if we and the other major carbon-producing countries take immediate, drastic steps to reduce that production, we still face future climate change that will produce severe alterations where we live.
If we don't do anything, those changes will be catastrophic. Those are the real choices: a four-car crash on the highway or a 24-car train wreck.
Gore's problem is not that he's an alarmist; it's that he's a cockeyed optimist.
