Mike Kimmitt
tennessee.com
March 5, 2010
Once, there was a short-lived sitcom about two lovable but hapless New York City cops who, whenever chaos reigned, always seemed to be elsewhere on some laughable misadventure. As the opening credits rolled, a frustrated dispatcher could be heard mournfully pleading, “Car 54, where are you?”
Recently a similar question has been directed to Al Gore, our resident global-warming alarmist extraordinaire. Perhaps wanting some explanation for the embarrassing revelations of serial fraud committed by the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or just needing help shoveling record-high snowdrifts, the common folks were met with icy silence. That is, until this past weekend.
On Sunday, Mr. Gore emerged from hibernation and he had something he wanted to say … and say … and say. In The New York Times, the former VP- turned-future-enviro-billionaire needed 2,000 words to let us know how foolish we are to believe our own eyes and frostbitten tootsies. As is normally the case, his lecture was overly wordy and insufferably pedantic, but here’s a shot at a synopsis:
We’ve just endured the second-hottest January in 130 years, glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising, the Earth is suffering widespread droughts and floods simultaneously, hurricanes threaten, species extinctions are accelerating, millions of “climate refugees” are being displaced, civil unrest prevails, large-scale crop failures and pandemic diseases loom, and the “collapse of governance” is inevitable.
To make things even worse, “scientists” have confirmed that global warming has been “grossly understated.” Wow! In other words: same old same old. Quixotic Al is back atop his noble methane-emitting steed, and jousting once more with those medieval wind turbines.
The culprit? Well, here goes: Capitalism’s victory over communism caused “hubristic” free-market triumphalism that allowed wealthy corporations whose business plans relied on “unrestrained pollution of the atmospheric commons” to weaken advocates of regulatory reform just as the Senate’s failure to pass cap-and-trade legislation prevented an otherwise Earth-loving China from reducing its profligate pollution, while at the same time newspapers and magazines were replaced by television “showmen masquerading as political thinkers who packaged hatred and divisiveness as entertainment.” Got it? Ipso facto: Things got hot.
Gore and his ilk increasingly resemble the old Japanese soldier who continued to resist surrender on a South Pacific island for three decades after the emperor had called it a day. Al, the war’s over. Thousands of legitimate climate scientists have blown your cover. Evidence can be found in Lawrence Solomon’s book The Deniers about the “world-renowned scientists who stood up against global-warming hysteria, political persecution and fraud.”
For decades, our education and media elite have foisted the false religion of Earth worship on us. The fact that global warming is at the bottom of Americans’ list of concerns indicates they get it; and that’s a testament to their native intelligence.
Mike Kimmitt is a communications consultant who lives in Franklin.
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