[ back ]
Al Gore: A convenient exaggeration?
(by Luigi Luciano - March 08, 2007)
Oscars for Al Gore Global Warming Film. Al Gore Wins Oscar, Teases Over Candidacy For US President. Al Gore’s big announcement. Al Gore's Oscar Stirs 2008 Election Buzz.
I watched the Oscars which I really enjoyed. Until people started drooling over Al Gore like he was some naked woman standing in a men’s locker room.
Why? Because it is Hollywood, a town of people who have too much time, money and no clue of reality. After all they make fantasies and most times they don’t know the difference between real life and fantasy. With his win it was political and a matter of which nominees can afford to lobby the voting members of the academy.
I think it is admirable for someone to champion a cause they really believe in. I know people who hate the cruelty to animals so they don’t eat meat. I can respect that.
We have Al Gore who stood on the stage at the Oscars glowing and getting accolades from people about what a caring man he is when it comes to the environment. If they asked one more time if he had an announcement to make I was going to shut off the TV. The only announcement I wanted to hear is that he is starting Nutra-System next week.
Maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on big Al after all this caring man only wants to help the environment by cutting back on the greenhouses gases. After all he has done his share. Or has he?
Public records reveal that as Gore lectures Americans on excessive consumption, 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, Tenn.) That’s OK with me as long as he plans to downsize. After all 3 homes have to be using some electricity, heating and I am sure they have air conditioning. In fact did you know that his electric bills add up to $30,000 per year!
Gore has held these views about the environment for some time. So why, then, didn't Gore dump his family's large stock holdings in Occidental (Oxy) Petroleum? As executor of his family's trust, over the years Gore has controlled hundreds of thousands of dollars in Oxy stock. Who by the way has been riddled in controversy over oil drilling in ecologically sensitive areas?
According to Al living carbon-neutral apparently doesn't mean living oil-stock free. Nor does it necessarily mean giving up a mining royalty either.
We might be "sitting on a ticking time bomb," but Gore's home in Carthage is sitting on a zinc mine. Gore receives $20,000 a year in royalties from Pasminco Zinc, which operates a zinc concession on his property. Tennessee has cited the company for adding large quantities of barium, iron and zinc to the nearby Caney Fork River. I guess as long as it doesn’t affect Al it’s OK.
The issue here is not simply Gore's hypocrisy; it's a question of credibility. If he genuinely believes the vision he put forth and calls for radical changes in the way other people live, why hasn't he made any radical change in his life? Giving up the zinc mine or one of his homes is not asking much, given that he wants the rest of us to radically change our lives.
In my mind humans are certainly not helping in the global warming issue but we are not the cause of it all either. The world is old and has survived a long time. There are natural cycles that it goes through. I recall in 1970’s in high school the big talk was the next ice age that was coming soon.
Heck we had ice ages and the ice melted. We have had warming period before as well just not the equipment we have today to measure it so accurately. Did you know Greenland got its name from the verdant pastures that attracted the Norse settlers under Eric the Red in 986. They carried on their normal way of life (based on cattle, grain, hay and herring) for 300 years until the Little Ice Age, when they were driven off by the encroaching ice and the Inuit took over. The ice and the Inuit are still there.
Did you know using a scientific method known as phenology—in which the onset of various stages of plant growth are correlated with climate—a team was able to reconstruct spring and summer temperatures in Burgundy France from 1370 to 2003. The findings are based on the harvest dates of pinot noir grapes. According to the reconstructed temperature record, warm summers like those of the 1990s have occurred several times in Burgundy since the fourteenth century. The heat wave of summer 2003, however, was the hottest ever for Western Europe. But "The year 2003 is a record in the sense that this has never been seen at any time since the Middle Ages."
What Al does not want you to know is that Britain is one degree Celsius cooler now than it was at the time of the Doomsday book. Carbon dioxide is a minor greenhouse gas. In the atmosphere there is over a hundred times the concentration of water vapor, which is the dominant greenhouse gas. Without the Greenhouse Effect there would be no life on Earth. Temperature measurements by satellite radio sonde balloons and well maintained rural surface stations in the West show no significant warming. The only evidence of significant warming comes from mainly non-western stations that are probably ill maintained or those that are contaminated by the Urban Heat Island Effect. Computer models of the climate are worthless, as they are based on many assumptions about interactions between climate factors that are still unknown to science. They are generally unstable and chaotic, giving a wide variety of answers depending on the input assumptions. The Kyoto agreement would have a devastating effect on the world economy but since carbon dioxide is a minor greenhouse gas an undetectable effect on the climate.
The IPCC (the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) has been the main engine for promoting the global warming scare. It has become notorious for its corrupt practices of doctoring its reports and executive summaries, after they have been approved by the participating scientists, to conform to its political objectives. The really big lie about man-made global warming is that almost all scientists accept it. More than 4,000 scientists from 106 countries, including 72 Nobel Prize winners, signed the Heidelberg Appeal (1992), calling for a rational scientific approach to environmental problems. Many senior scientists have also supported the Statement by Atmospheric Scientists on Greenhouse Warming (1992), The Leipzig Declaration (1997) and finally the Oregon Petition (1998) which received the signatures of over 19,000 scientists.
So all the Hollywood people can stand up and applaud Al and try to recruit him for President. This way if he wins we can not worry about the war on terror and the killing of Americans and put all our resources to saving some animal that might be going extinct.
Thank God he was not around to save the Dinosaurs!
Visit Luigi on the web at www.listentoluigi.com. Luigi wants to know what you think and will be happy to answer e-mails sent to him at luigi@listentoluigi.com. Some e-mail may be published in The Weekly or on the web.
[ back ]
