Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Important anniversary

Mark Hyman at the American Spectator reminds us that this month marks the fifth anniversary of the release (I almost typed “escape”) of Al Gore’s crockumentary, An Inconvenient Truth. The essay is a nice recap of the Gorean hysteria, and underscores how Big Al managed to turn junk science into an international pants-wetting mania that, coincidentally, secured him a seat in the first-class compartment of the gravy train.
Not content with his role as Chicken Little, Gore went on to co-found a "carbon credit" company that has made him millions. He even used the carbon credit service for himself. He deems his extravagant, high-energy use home as being "carbon neutral" because he purchases "carbon offsets." From himself.
In the past, I have referred to Al Gore as the Aimee Semple McPherson of the Cli-Fi crowd. I’m beginning to wonder if he isn’t more like the movement’s Bernie Madoff.

Update: Prospective Republican presidential candidacies seem to be popping like balloons at a porcupine’s birthday party. Huckabee and Trump are gone, Newt may well have self-destructed with his attack on Paul Ryan’s entitlements plan, and now Jon Huntsman takes a walk on the ledge by unmasking himself as a climate-change believer.
All I know is 90 percent of the scientists say climate change is occurring. If 90 percent of the oncological community said something was causing cancer we’d listen to them.
Well, Jon, let me ask you something. What if the dean and chief mouthpiece of the “oncological community” was a man who majored in government as an undergraduate, did poorly in science and math classes, later dropped out of divinity school and obtained a law degree, and went on to enjoy a modestly successful political career, only to flame out in a burst of extreme weirdness in a losing presidential campaign against a guy who would one day wind up being caricatured by vicious cartoonists as a chimp? Furthermore, what if he had once been in the pay of the tobacco lobby? Would these facts not tend to undermine your blind faith in the credibility of a medical establishment of which he was the leading light? Or – and I am still using the oncological analogy – would you unquestioningly agree to a colonoscopy performed with an Apache double-jacket fire hose and a Sunbeam minicam because the "science is settled"?


"Let's see...home massages...home massages..."

4 comments:

JeffS said...

Al Gore like Bernie Madoff? More like Jim Jones. I just hope he goes down alone.

TW: sodistm. Yeah, it does feel like Gore is buggering the world, doesn't it?

Paco said...

These TWs simply can't be random.

bruce said...

The oncological community do actually make all sorts of extreme assertions about things like 'second-hand smoke' causing cancer. And those of us who weren't born yesterday know to take it *with a grain of salt*, because we know numerous instances which contradict the claims! Exactly as with 'climate change'.

bingbing said...

That update is getting linked. Gold.