Al Gore sat down for an interview with the Washington Post’s Ezra Klein, and provides some real howlers. Here’s the part relevant to the headline (via Watts Up With That?)
EK: Give me the optimistic scenario on what happens next. If all goes well, what do the next few years look like on this issue?
AG: Well, I think the most important part of it is winning the conversation. I remember as a boy when the conversation on civil rights was won in the South. I remember a time when one of my friends made a racist joke and another said, hey man, we don’t go for that anymore. The same thing happened on apartheid. The same thing happened on the nuclear arms race with the freeze movement. The same thing happened in an earlier era with abolition. A few months ago, I saw an article about two gay men standing in line for pizza and some homophobe made an ugly comment about them holding hands and everyone else in line told them to shut up. We’re winning that conversation.
The conversation on global warming has been stalled because a shrinking group of denialists fly into a rage when it’s mentioned. It’s like a family with an alcoholic father who flies into a rage every time a subject is mentioned and so everybody avoids the elephant in the room to keep the peace. But the political climate is changing. Something like Chris Hayes’s excellent documentary on climate change wouldn’t have made it on TV a few years ago. And as I said, many Republicans who’re still timid on the issue are now openly embarrassed about the extreme deniers. The deniers are being hit politically. They’re being subjected to ridicule, which stings. The polling is going back up in favor of doing something on this issue. The ability of the raging deniers to stop progress is waning every single day.
Al Gore should know about racists and anti-abolitionists, considering his father and his background. Nor is this the first time Gore has called Climate Realists racists. Much like with other subjects, the far Left uses such pejoratives in order to attempt to shut down debate, a debate that Gore and his little minions are losing.
Notice how much Gore talks about politics: that’s because this is a political issue, not a scientific. If it was science, perhaps Gore and his minions, along with all the people involved in the UN IPCC and “climate” research would practice what they preach. But Gore doesn’t want that, he wants cap-and-trade, because he makes a boatload of money off them. And he wants these policies implemented further, because he stands to make money off them, and, unstated, probably because so many carbon trading markets are collapsing, so he needs more that have higher prices.
Al Gore: We have already crossed the 400 parts per million mark. We crossed it earlier this year. The question now is how high it will go before we begin bending the curve. But in spite of the continued released of 90 million tons of global warming pollution every day into the atmosphere, as if it’s an open sewer, we are now seeing the approach of a global political tipping point.
Actually, no, we didn’t cross 400ppm. CO2 is not pollution. And Gore releases way more than his “fair share”, rather than reducing his own “carbon footprint”.
The appearance of more extreme and more frequent weather events has had a very profound impact on public opinion in countries throughout the world. You mentioned my movie back in the day. The single most common criticism from skeptics when the film came out focused on the animation showing ocean water flowing into the World Trade Center memorial site. Skeptics called that demagogic and absurd and irresponsible. It happened last October 29th, years ahead of schedule, and the impact of that and many, many other similar events here and around the world has really begun to create a profound shift.
The extreme weather meme has already been debunked. Sandy was not the first big storm to hit the Tri-state area, nor will it be the last.
If you look at superstorm Sandy on October 29th, the ocean water east of New Jersey was nine degrees fahrenheit above average. That’s what put so much more energy into that storm. That’s what put so much more water vapor into that storm. Would there be a storm anyway? Maybe so. Would there be hurricanes and floods and droughts without man-made global warming? Of course. But they’re stronger now. The extreme events are more extreme. The hurricane scale used to be 1-5 and now they’re adding a 6. The fingerprint of man-made global warming is all over these storms and extreme weather events.
The US hasn’t been hit with a major hurricane since October 24 2005, the longest period on record. Sandy was not a hurricane when it made landfall, and there has only been one landfalling hurricane since 2008, and calling Isaac a hurricane is charitable. No one is adding a 6 to the hurricane scale. What put the energy into Sandy was a cold front. Tornado activity is at an all time low. The seas aren’t rising above average. Drought and flooding are not abnormal. Nothing is stronger.
The man is a hysteric. I used to appreciate his calm, reasoned voice, particularly on real environmental issues, to the point that I voted for him in 2000. He’s off the edge of the map at this point.
