Cold? Internet Al Says You Aren’t

Global warming is a huge problem and we know this because former Vice President Al Gore says so and after all, he created the Internet, didn’t he?

Gore said "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet." (March 1999, CNN).

Gore supporters say that quote is out of context and Gore today says those who deny global warming "persist in an air of unreality." Having been a politician before he got the Nobel Peace Prize for his global warming work in 2007, Gore is clearly qualified to recognize unreality when he sees it.

Not everyone else is so qualified. Folks this week in Madison, Wisconsin were clearly unqualified to see 18 inches of blowing and drifting global warming for the unreality it was. They were so unqualified that they shut down the University of Wisconsin campus for an extremely rare snow day.

But that’s probably because they don’t see the bigger picture, which will be on display at Copenhagen’s climate conference. Like most other entertainment, Copenhagen will require a ticket and the one being used is a simple unquestioning belief that humans and their greenhouse gas production are making the earth warmer.

Folks like Gore will say we’ve got to stop burning fossil fuels and raising and eating so many farting cows. We must make do with less and pay more for it, Gore will say before returning to his mansion and perhaps a steak dinner.

Doing with less will be welcomed as fashionably correct by some of the 20 percent of humans on the planet who live in advanced societies. The other 80 percent won’t much care, since worrying about your next meal often distracts you from higher realities.

Still, our climate leaders are convinced that when things are properly explained, most of the world’s population will be content to live hungry in the dark because burning fossil fuels for electricity or power farming equipment contributes to global warming. And our leaders can certainly cite each other when asked to justify their claims, since they admit no higher authority.

There are skeptics. Former Alaska Governor and Chief Republican Ditz Sarah Palin strays off-message and makes sense when she notes that climate cycles are natural and adds in a Washington Post op-ed that “…while we recognize the occurrence of these natural, cyclical environmental trends, we can't say with assurance that man's activities cause weather changes. We can say, however, that any potential benefits of proposed emissions reduction policies are far outweighed by their economic costs.”

To which Al Gore and his playmates in Copenhagen will tut their tuts and say they have solid evidence that human activity is causing global warming. After all, they have maybe 100 years of measured data from a few places on a big planet that’s 4.5 billion years old. Before my calculator got tired, it told me that’s a sample of 0.000000022 percent for any one place, never mind the whole globe.

That’s not even a sample big enough to call a presidential election, but don’t worry, former Vice President Al Gore says the earth is warming and after all, he’s the guy who “took the initiative in creating the Internet.”

That thought will probably warm hearts in Madison, Wisconsin, where temperatures will hit -2 degrees Fahrenheit at night and skyrocket to 15 in the day. Although they might feel cold they will know that in reality they aren’t cold because Al Gore and his Copenhagen playmates say the globe is warming.

Besides, Gore and Company are again taking the initiative. If you’re freezing or starving or just skeptical, be polite about suggesting where and how they should take it.

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