Al Gore: You should never let an apocalypse go to waste

Al Gore, who apparently aspires to the title of national schmuck, has written an op-ed piece for the New York Times that may well win him the conical crown.

In his latest effort at climate change apologetics, Al grasps his lapels, clears his throat, and proclaims the following:

It would be an enormous relief if the recent attacks on the science of global warming actually indicated that we do not face an unimaginable calamity requiring large-scale, preventive measures to protect human civilization as we know it.

Yes, yes. I’m sure that Al weeps at every new up-tick in his bank balance that results from the sale of another book or DVD peddling the anthropogenic global-warming malarkey, or the fee from giving another speech on the subject, or the cabbage that he harvests as director of a renewable-energy investment fund. But even if climate change weren’t a matter calling for dramatic efforts by world governments to save us from that ominous tipping point that is ten years twenty years not so far off – and I’m only saying this for the sake of argument, mind you, because the science is, of course, settled – there are all these other reasons why we should continue to pump money into windmills and geothermal plants and hamster treadmills:

…we would still need to deal with the national security risks of our growing dependence on a global oil market dominated by dwindling reserves in the most unstable region of the world, and the economic risks of sending hundreds of billions of dollars a year overseas in return for that oil. And we would still trail China in the race to develop smart grids, fast trains, solar power, wind, geothermal and other renewable sources of energy — the most important sources of new jobs in the 21st century.

Well, one way to cut reliance on foreign oil is to permit more drilling in the United States, but I digress. How about nuclear power? Isn’t that more efficient than windmills?

Al goes on, in his magnanimous way, to acknowledge that climate scientists may have made “at least two mistakes” (For the record, Al is “at least” two years old). Also, Judge Gore finds that “e-mail messages stolen from the University of East Anglia in Britain showed that scientists besieged by an onslaught of hostile, make-work demands from climate skeptics may not have adequately followed the requirements of the British freedom of information law.” Really? Is that all? What about the data that have gone mysteriously missing – you know, the data that supposedly supported the hockey-stick graph? What about the bully-boy tactics employed by the true believers to undermine the credibility of their fellow scientists? What about the bogus models? Judge Gore has decided to issue a nol prosequi on these other, rather more important infractions.

Al also wants to impress us with his economic expertise (permit me to do a running fisk):

The decisive victory of democratic capitalism over communism in the 1990s led to a period of philosophical dominance for market economics worldwide and the illusion of a unipolar world [Thanks to Al – and the current occupant of the White House - that “unipolar” ice cap is now melting]. It also led, in the United States, to a hubristic “bubble” of market fundamentalism that encouraged opponents of regulatory constraints [”Opponents of regulatory constraints”? You mean capitalist fanatics like Barney Frank and Christopher Dodd?] to mount an aggressive effort to shift the internal boundary between the democracy sphere and the market sphere [That’s right, democracy and markets are contrary forces, our own socio-political yin and yang, and Al thinks yang has gotten too big for his britches].

For good measure, Al takes a whack at television media (read “Fox News”):

…changes in America’s political system — including the replacement of newspapers and magazines by television as the dominant medium of communication — conferred powerful advantages on wealthy advocates of unrestrained markets and weakened advocates of legal and regulatory reforms [ Let’s see; TV began displacing newspapers as the “dominant medium of communication” in the 1950s – Whoa! Wasn’t that the era of McCarthyism? Now climate-change skepticism becomes perfectly clear!] Some news media organizations now present showmen masquerading as political thinkers who package hatred and divisiveness as entertainment [Somehow I don’t think he’s talking about Keith Olbermann].

“Just as it’s important not to miss the forest for the trees, neither should we miss the climate for the snowstorm.” Ah, but the most important thing of all is not to miss the asylum for the lunatics, or the boiler-room operation for the con-men. So, thank you, Al for helping us to maintain the proper…perspective.