Al Gore's Inconvenient Lies
Al Gore's movie "An Inconvenient Truth" has some major flaws, the first one of which is that it's perfectly propagandistic. The truth presented is Al Gore's truth, no other human being anywhere on earth who has another truth or even a significant variation of his truth is to be seen anywhere? The Al Gore goofy left may wonder why Fox News is now the most trusted source of news in America when the the answer is obvious, at least to Republicans. Fox always has liberal guests on to balance the generally Republican perspective of the Fox regulars. It gives the unmistakable impression that they trust the audience with the whole truth; not that the audience is regarded as stupid, manipulatable, and therefore can or should be brainwashed to suit Democratic political objectives.
Is the endemic lack of balance in the way Democrats think and present ideas the same lack of balance they would like to be reflected by the gov't? Of course. Despite 200 years of American liberty slipping away to an ever growing Federal Gov't, the scatophagous Democrats still stand for nothing more than an ever growing gov't that would necessarily be the manifestation of a few powerful socialists at the top who would ignore the liberty of everyone else. It is a treasonous concept in a supposedly free Republican county. But it is at the heart and soul of the way the Democrats think and operate.
If you look at left wing web sites you find the same phenomena. By a ratio of about 10 to one (as compared to Republican sites) the content is non democratic or one sided attacks on Republicans, or, even worse, simple personal smears against Republicans. Fear of genuine debate wherein two positions are compared side by side is something Democrats fear above all. They are bigoted true believers who fear the truth above all, but love their egos above all else. From the dawn of human history their collectivist mentality has been the single most significant threat to liberty on earth. The Constitution was designed to protect us from this Democratic mentality.
Al Gore did present one critically interesting fact in the movie though. He mentioned in passing that forest fires contribute 30% of global warming. Other sources, of course not mentioned in the movie, say forest fires contribute as much or more than all other sources combined. If this is the case, the question then becomes: do we listen to Al Gore and the other totalitarian Democrats who want the power to dramatically socialize the entire earth's economies and impoverish the life of every human being on earth in order to limit carbon emissions, or do we want to simply put out forest fires, which by comparison would involve very little and cost next to nothing?
The forest fire control idea is not liked by Democrats, it would seem, because it does not naturally lead to a huge totalitarian expansion of gov't that they would expect to control and orchestrate. There has been no issue on earth since the beginning of human history that Democrats have not used as an excuse for the concentration of political power in their totalitarian hands. Global warming may represent one of their best opportunities ever, but only if the Republican Constitution fails to stand in their way.
There was another interesting lie in "An Inconvenient Truth" which is that limiting carbon emissions to combat warming would create jobs and prosperity. This socialist buffoonery holds that if you have to build new windmills, electric cars, and solar heaters there will be new jobs and new prosperity for all. This is plain stupid of course but you can never make a Democrat believe it. According to sound economic theory you don't produce prosperity when the gov't decides by decree that certain products are no longer suitable for the free market place. If that were true govt's around the world could end poverty and bring prosperity to all by simply saying that products A,B, and C are now deemed to be obsolete; we will declare this to be law, and then look forward to the new jobs and greater prosperity that will come as entrepreneurs invent new products to take the place of the ones which our crystal ball decreed to be obsolete. It's a formula for economic growth that only a dead, dumb, and blind socialist, or a Democrat, could love. It is also Al Gore's formula.
Windmills, electric cars, and solar heaters don't sell more because they cost more. To Americans, perhaps, they are affordable, but then again maybe not given, for example, how many Americans already live below the poverty line or without health insurance. To the rest of the world, which is far poorer, adding even a few cents to their cost of living with "green products" could be a death sentence for sure. Are deathly poor people wrong to choose life giving cheap carbon based products today over the threat of global warming in 100 years? If Al Gore knows what the price of energy ought to be why not let him set the price of everything on earth? Oh yes, I almost forgot, they tried that in the USSR, Cuba, and Communist China, but somehow the predicant Mr. Gore missed those lessons.
There were things to learn from the movie though. Did you know that quite possibly, in the next ten years, a new ice age will descend on Europe? It is true, at least according to Al Gore. When Greenland melts the resulting cold, fresh water will stop the global conveyor of ocean currents from functioning as it does now, and thus a new ice age will descend on Europe as it did when the original Great Lakes of North America drained into the North Atlantic. So far we have seen mountains of Artic ice, and now Antarctic ice, collapsing into into the sea more than we have have seen the Twin Towers collapsing, but still the climate of Europe, and my beaches, remain unchanged in 30 years? One thing is certain: in ten years Al Gore may have little credibility left. Of course, though, it was 30 years ago that Al Gore, as an impressionable college student, became alarmed about global warming, but his reputation has only increased since then despite no significant effects from global warming so far?
And of course the propagandistic Gore trotted out the fabled snows of Kilimanjaro as proof of global warming. Yes, warming is taking place but lying about Kilimanjaro only creates skeptics and makes you wonder once again why Democrats can't be fair and balanced. Here is the science of it from Cato: Thompson cited five surveys of Kilimanjaro, from 1912, 1953, 1976, 1989 and 2000. From 1912 to 1953, global temperature rose 0.74F. Most scientists think this warming had mainly to do with the sun, and little from human activity, as the bulk of human greenhouse gas emissions took place in the second half of the last century, not the first. Kilimanjaro's glaciers lost 45 percent of their real extant ice in that era of non-human warming. If the glaciers had continued on their merry way at the pace established in that period, they would be gone by now.
And then of course Gore used Hurricane Katrina, his new best friend and lover, but here's what Max Mayfield of the US Government Hurricane Center said to the AP: The past 10 years have been the most active hurricane seasons on record, and many researchers say the trend could persist for another 20 years or more. They believe it's a consequence of natural salinity and temperature change in the Atlantic's deep current circulation, elements that shift back and forth every 40-60 years. National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield agrees. He said that while Atlantic hurricane seasons have been active for a decade, that isn't true around the world. "In fact, the Asian Pacific is way down the past few years. Is that due to global warming, a decrease in hurricanes? I haven't bought into that one yet," he said.
Then there is the amazing guilt trip about America causing more global warming than any other country. This fits perfectly with the Democratic notion that America is and should be hated around the world, and that we should be more like the less successful, old world, wine and cheese loving countries that Democrats love so much. How coincidental? The truth is that without America as the policeman and economic engine of the world there would be few people alive to even worry about global warming, let alone the economic prosperity to produce it. Imagine if Republicans had not been there in the 20th Century to end their very blood thirsty World Wars and teach them about liberty and capitalism? Endless war and eternal, grinding poverty would have been their fate. Gore and the Democrats, as usually, show no understanding of liberty and capitalism and accordingly feel very free to blame America for global warming, and everything else too.
On the personal side, Gore once again used his dead sister and his son's near fatal accident to sell global warning exactly the way he used them through two successive Democratic National Conventions to sell himself as a Vice Presidential and Presidential Candidate? It felt exploitive at best. And, he made a big point of how a nonscientist at the White House had rewritten scientific reports on global warming because his income depended on it, but Gore never explained how he is able to afford travel all over the world to give 1000's of slide presentations in support of global warming? It seems his income too may now be very dependent on global warming.
What Gore seems to want most is that we stop burning oil. But how is this possible anyway? Is it conceivable that greener cars and other products which might save, say, 50% of the oil used by regular cars and other regular products can make up for the pollution from all the new cars and other products that a far richer and far more populated planet will require over the next 100 years? It is nearly impossible especially when you consider that the fastest growth rates are in China and India where the population is 7 times ours and the energy efficiency(oil used per $1 of GDP) is half ours.
Here is the way the argument about evil America actually plays out: Gore famously has said the automobile (particularity the gas guzzling pollution belching American automobile) is the single biggest threat to civilization because of the green house gases it produces. But, in point of fact, in China alone, over the next 15 years, coal production will double. When burned that incremental amount, to say nothing of the current amount, will produce an amount of green house gases equlivent to that produced by 3 billion big Ford Expeditions. So, even if we panicked and destroyed every single car in America, China will produce 40 times the pollution of every American car in existence just from the incremental amount of coal they will burn in the next 15 years. And this is to say nothing of all the other new forms of pollution that China, India and the rest of the growing world will be dumping into what Gore claims is our already saturated atmosphere.
Moreover, even if the current new high price of oil were to make "green" things affordable by comparison, the price of oil will always be adjusted so that every last drop on earth will be burned. In the end, if Arabs have to sell their oil to deathly poor people for $1 a barrel they will do so rather than let the poor people die, and themselves go without the revenue to which they are so addicted.
The film did not mention global dimming (significant cooling of the earth caused as the sun is shielded from the earth by jet engine exhaust). When jet planes were grounded from 9/11-9/13 scientists learned that jet exhaust significantly shields the earth from the sun in a way that counteracts global warming to a very large extent. So, isn't it possible that more jet traffic (something that will occur with increasing wealth anyway) and more of it scheduled at noon, and fewer forest fires, are a cheap, free and effortless way to control global warming that beats transforming the world's economies, impoverishing and killing millions of poor people, and giving up American freedom to Democrats who don't understand their own totalitarian, ulterior motives?
And odder still is that while Al Gore's beloved planet earth is perhaps 10 years or so from final destruction he claims not to be interested in being President of the United States, a position from which he would obviously be in the best possible position to save all of our lives? He has time though. If he waits until 2012 he'll still have 4 years or so to save the planet. But if he waits till 2016 (not actually taking office until 2017) he may well have the distinct honor of being the last President of the United States. That must be his ulterior motive.
Ted Baiamonte
thedumbdemocrat.blogspot.com |
