Al Gore’s Year in Review

As published on Parcbench on 23 December 2009

On my radio show, one of my favorite topics is global warming. I have long argued that while the earth may have warmed over the past 35 years, mankind is not the de facto cause. In fact, some of the sampling may suggest that the recent peak temperatures may have been in 1998.

America’s own eco-avenger is obviously the former Vice-president, Al Gore. While Mr. Gore may has been a friend of the environment for decades, it has only been in the last ten that I like to focus my attention. Gore’s 1992 book, Earth in the Balance, was his first major foray into the environmental discussion. After his loss in the 2000 election, Gore amped up his new campaign: monetize the global warming industry.

Gore may have had a long personal interest in the ecology of the earth, but this time, he found being green was also the color of money. On one hand, he lectured and testified extensively to advance the theory man-made global warming while behind the scenes, he was massing a portfolio of investment funds; he was setting himself up to cash in one day on the hysteria he helped cause. I have also called him “Washington’s most influential non-declared lobbyist”.

Little did anyone guess what 2009 would be for Al Gore and the global warming crowd. Instead of a predictable (and boring) year’s top 10 list, here is a short chronicle of key moments in the life of private citizen Gore.

January 7: Al Gore blogs about James Lee’s op-ed in the Washington Post linking global warming as a nation security issue. Lee proposed that with the globe’s climate in crisis, people would take up arms as water dried up, land mass shrunk and food became scarce. No alarmism here.

January 27: Meteorologist Dr. Roy Spencer calls out Al Gore and his “propaganda”, saying that the former VP falsely claims Dr. Spencer is in the pocket of Big Oil.

Later that same day, Al Gore’s Senate testimony on global warming is postponed due to cold weather.

January 28: Al Gore tells Senate green jobs will help job growth. Unemployment is currently 7.6% nationally.

March 14: Gore expresses optimism and says the UN meeting on climate in Copenhagen in December will be the political tipping point in favor of environmentalists.

April 22: Brimming with optimism, Al declares ‘2009 is the environmental Gettysburg’.

August 2: In the dead middle of summer, Gore and other global warming proponents lament shrinking ice in the Arctic. In a related story, Antarctic ice continues 30-year increase – almost doubling the amount from the statistical baseline. (hint: the earth has two poles)

August 10: UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon makes the emotional plea that we only have 4 months to save the planet from global warming.

September 2: Ban Ki-moon visits doomsday seed vault in Arctic – a repository of seeds of the major food and other plants in the event they are all killed off by a warming planet. (related, the Secretary warns Arctic could be ice-free by 2030. If that’s the case, they may want to move the seed vault to the Southern Hemisphere in the next 20 years)

November 2: Daily Finance estimates that Al Gore may become the first ‘eco billionaire’ because of his many green inventments, including the  $5 billion dollar fund, Generation Investment Management. (I’m sure that if he were required to register as a lobbyist, Gore would only be worth tens of millions). Unemployment hits a 26-year high of 10.2.

November 12: A true scientist relies on facts when making a point. Al Gore tells Conan O’Brien that the core of the earth is several million degrees (which is about 545 times the surface of the sun). Actually, the core is approximately 4,000C but gathering facts can be oh, so inconvenient.

November 17: Frustrated by stonewalling of the UK’s version of the ‘Freedom of Information Act’, a hacker exposes over 60 megabytes of emails stored at the Climate Research Unit of University East Anglia. The CRU is one of the world’s leading authorities on climate change and the emails discuss the coverup of global warming research suggesting the earth’s temperature is not increasing but decreasing. The term ‘Climategate’ is born.

December 1: When asked to comment on Climategate, SENATOR Barbara Boxer (a key author of the Senate’s cap and trade legislation) says she’d rather call It Email-theft-gate. Earlier in her career, Sen. Boxer was the co-sponsor of the Military Whistleblower Act. No irony there.

December 2: Oscar Academy members and conservatives, Roger Simon and Lionel Chetwynd, demand Al Gore return his Oscar for An Inconvenient Truth.

December 4: Al Gore cancels a book event touting his latest novel “Our Choice”. 3,000 Danes paid up to $1,200 for a meet and greet with Gore.

December 16: Speaking in Copenhagen, Gore says that according to scientist and oceanographer Wieslaw Maslowski, there was a 75% chance that the  Arctic would be ice-free every summer in 5-7 years. The next day, Dr. Maslowski said “It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at, based on the information I provided to Al Gore’s office”. Mr. Gore said in a clarification that he “misspoke”.

December 20: Washington DC, Baltimore and Upton NY (site of the NY National weather service) received a record late-Fall blizzard. Other than the Senate which has been in session for 22 straight days, voting in the middle of the night to end debate on healthcare legislation,  the Federal government is shut down the next day to facilitate the removal of about 20″ of snow.

After a year which started with so much promise for the former Vice-president, 2009 seems to be ending with a whimper. NPR even reported today in an article titled “Copenhagen Crushed” that the conference failed in coming to any broad agreement among the titans and developing countries alike. Under the specter of Climategate and the number of record cold temperatures this year around the globe, Mr. Gore’s job as global warming alarmist-in-chief may be in jeopardy.

And it’s not like he can fall back on his poetry gig.

-

Man-made global warming denier Michael Fidanza is the host of The Armchair Energist Show on RFC Radio and can be heard at 11am-noon ET. His website is www.ArmchairEnergist.com