Bloodthirsty Liberal

In European newspapers these days, they publish the weather report and the obituaries on the same page:

The bitterly cold weather across much of the continent combined with heavy snow in some areas has caused cancellations and delays at airports and forced train lines to close.

…

Road traffic in the UK was severely disrupted, including the south-east where roads were gridlocked late on Monday after numerous crashes in heavy snowfall.

Major roads elsewhere in Europe were blocked after some regions had snowfall of up to 50cm (20in).

…

In Poland, police appealed for people to help if they came across homeless or drunk people lying outside, as temperatures dropped towards -20C in some areas.

Most of the 79 people who froze to death in the country since the wintry conditions began were homeless, police said.

Cold-related deaths were also reported in France, where two homeless people died.

Damn. That’s 79 probable global warming skeptics we lost. Did anyone check to see if Al Gore was in town?

Oh no, of course not. Al was home:

(Another view here: choose “Aerial”.)

You can tell he’s home because three SUVs are parked in the driveway—and what empty-nest couple needs more than three SUVs?

What’s the term? A visual metaphor. They are lost, utterly lost.

He sweat like a pig; he might taste like one as well.

Not quite done. Still a little pink.

If we’re still worried about the polar ice caps, btw, send Gore to Spitsbergen for a little R&R. He’s a one-man cold front:

In the Department of Delicious Irony, we see that the Al Gore Effect has struck the Copenhagen conference:

World leaders flying into Copenhagen today to discuss a solution to global warming will first face freezing weather as a blizzard dumped 10 centimeters (4 inches) of snow on the Danish capital overnight.

“Temperatures will stay low at least the next three days,” Henning Gisseloe, an official at Denmark’s Meteorological Institute, said today by telephone, forecasting more snow in coming days. “There’s a good chance of a white Christmas.”

…

Denmark has a maritime climate and milder winters than its Scandinavian neighbors. It hasn’t had a white Christmas for 14 years, under the DMI’s definition, and only had seven last century.

No wonder China is telling everyone to [bleep] off:

China has refused to even discuss actually reducing its current greenhouse gas pollution because that would go contrary to the country’s rapid pace of economic growth. It says it will cut emissions as a percentage of future economic growth but has balked at international verification and monitoring, calling that a threat to its sovereignty. Instead it prefers to act as its own watchdog on compliance.

“Its own watchdog”: reports don’t indicate whether China said that with a straight face, but I’m not sure even a guard at Buckingham Palace could refrain from bending over and slapping a knee at that one.

Watchdogs are a delicacy over there.

As a fellow film director, Al Gore should know better than to plagiarize Woody Allen (or make stuff up):

“In his speech, Mr Gore told the conference: ‘These figures are fresh. Some of the models suggest to Dr [Wieslav] Maslowski that there is a 75 per cent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during the summer months, could be completely ice-free within five to seven years.’

“However, the climatologist whose work Mr Gore was relying upon dropped the former Vice-President in the water with an icy blast.

“‘It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at,’ Dr Maslowski said. ‘I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this.’

Sound familiar?

Al Gore, meet Heidi D. Klein:

Perhaps Mr Gore had felt the need to gild the lily to buttress resolve. But his speech was roundly criticised by members of the climate science community. “This is an exaggeration that opens the science up to criticism from sceptics,” Professor Jim Overland, a leading oceanographer at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said.

You rang?

Richard Lindzen, a climate scientist at the Massachusets Institute of Technology who does not believe that global warming is largely caused by man, said: “He’s just extrapolated from 2007, when there was a big retreat, and got zero.”

If the Boy Who Cried Wolf and Chicken Little managed to procreate, the offspring would look and act like Al Gore.

Sarah Palin wrote an op ed piece for the Washington Post (sending liberals into a terminal tizzy).

Al Gore called her a name.

Sarah Palin cleans his clock:

The response to my op-ed by global warming alarmists has been interesting. Former Vice President Al Gore has called me a “denier” and informs us that climate change is “a principle in physics. It’s like gravity. It exists.”

Perhaps he’s right. Climate change is like gravity – a naturally occurring phenomenon that existed long before, and will exist long after, any governmental attempts to affect it.

However, he’s wrong in calling me a “denier.” As I noted in my op-ed above and in my original Facebook post on Climategate, I have never denied the existence of climate change. I just don’t think we can primarily blame man’s activities for the earth’s cyclical weather changes.

Former Vice President Gore also claimed today that the scientific community has worked on this issue for 20 years, and therefore it is settled science. Well, the Climategate scandal involves the leading experts in this field, and if Climategate is proof of the larger method used over the past 20 years, then Vice President Gore seriously needs to consider that their findings are flawed, falsified, or inconclusive.

Vice President Gore, the Climategate scandal exists. You might even say that it’s sort of like gravity: you simply can’t deny it.

- Sarah Palin

On any playground I grew up on, Al Gore just got beat up by a girl, and a pretty one at that.

On the one hand, I condemn this brutal oppression of dissenting voices by the totalitarian state:

A top reformer has been sentenced to six years in jail after he stood trial on charges of fomenting unrest to topple the Iranian regime.

…

Abtahi made televised confessions after his arrest in which he admitted provoking people to riot. His family and fellow reformers said the confessions were obtained under duress.

Abtahi is one of more than 100 leading moderates detained after Iran’s disputed June 12 presidential election. He was accused of fomenting street protests aimed at overthrowing Iran’s clergy-led regime.

Abtahi served as vice president under reformist president Mohammad Khatami.

On the other hand, former Vice Presidents who “foment protest” could use a little time behind bars, don’t you think?

Can you guess who?

If you guessed Al Gore, go straight to the head of the class.

With apologies to those would will be made sick from reading this:

The news of this week made mention of Al Gore as our soon-to-be, first carbon billionaire. Accounts included both his earlier and contemporary angry denials that he was greedy, or had used his vast network of government contacts to influence public loans, contracts, and regulations, in parlaying a 2001 net worth of $2 million apparently into a green empire of several hundred million.

In Gore’s telling, he was worried only about the planet, put meager investments into promising green companies, and then, given divine intervention, found himself worth perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars.

Still, I’m not so interested in how Gore made his fortune, or even the ethics involved of barnstorming the planet in a first wave of scare tactics, then following up with a second wave of financial reaping from what his fear mongering had sown — but rather instead the divide between the world he advocates and the life he lives. After all, with cap-and-trade, our energy is going to go a tad higher — the rich oblivious to the cost, the poor to be recipients of government subsidized help.

To distill Gorism is to live in a 1,000 sq. ft. solar house, bike to work, and take the train on long distances; but to promote Gorism, one lives in a mansion, jets on private planes, and is chauffeured from airport to conference center — a rather heavy carbon footprint indeed. I mention that because this week he has insisted that he only invested in what he believes in and is thus not a hypocrite — sort of like a 1990s Fannie or Freddie director saying he is only taking mega-bonuses because he believes in public support for housing.

Go to the link and finish it off.

- Aggie

I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to question Al Gore’s patriotism. I meant to question his moral compass, his character, his sanity.

I’m sure he’s a great American. Or rather, I’m sure there are worse. On death rows and in isolation cells around this great land of ours.

Last week at the Society of Environmental Journalists conference in Wisconsin, former Vice President Al Gore took questions from journalists about global warming for the first time in years. I attended to ask him about factual errors in his movie, “An Inconvenient Truth.”

You wouldn’t know it from the sparse media coverage, but the British High Court found so many errors in Gore’s movie in 2007 that British schools no longer can show the film without the equivalent of a health warning.

I asked Gore if he intends to correct the record. He dodged the question, and the so-called reporters defended his right to be evasive by shutting off my mic.

The encounter was disappointing but not surprising. I served years of hard time as a liberal journalist in Europe and learned that covering the environmental beat meant toeing the line of extremism — no inconvenient questions allowed.

But it is now time for journalists, and the consumers and businesses that will pay the ultimate price, to start questioning the conventional wisdom about global warming and exposing its true cost. If alarmists like Al Gore get their way, millions of American families will watch as their dreams of a prosperous and pleasant future disappear.

The evidence of environmentalism run amok abounds in Europe. Spain believed the spin that environmental regulation can create “green jobs” and boost the economy. Now the country has 18% unemployment. Britain could suffer blackouts because of policies that require the country to replace coal with fuels like solar and wind power that aren’t readily available or reliable.

Unfortunately for Americans, many of the lawmakers who represent them in Congress seem unwilling to learn from Europe’s mistakes.

Is he kidding? Obama’s America is working overtime to become Jacques Chirac’s France. Well, not overtime. Following France’s example, we’re working 30 hours a week, with six weeks vacation a year, eight weeks family leave, two hours for lunch, to turn two-plus centuries of growth and success into dog [bleep].

PS: Hey Al, it’s snowing outside my window right now. October-bleeping-16th, and it’s snowing (albeit mixed with rain). Why don’t you bite me?

Sending jobs to Finland with our tax dollars

Gore-backed Fisker gets US$528.7M loan for luxury hybrids

Fisker Automotive Inc., a U.S. startup planning to sell luxury plug-in hybrid cars, secured a federal loan for as much as US$528.7-million to fund production of its low-emission models.

Energy Secretary Steven Chu said the Irvine, Calif.-based company will get the conditional financing for development of two lines of plug-in hybrids. [These will be manufactured in Finland, see note at bottom of post - Aggie] The loan is the fourth such announcement under a program intended to spur a market for vehicles that reduce fuel use and greenhouse gases.

“Plug-in hybrid electric vehicles could revolutionize personal transportation and cut our dependence on foreign oil, not to mention give us cleaner air and less carbon pollution,” Chu said in a statement. The Fisker project may create as many as 5,000 jobs, the Energy Department said.

The U.S. in June awarded about US$8-billion in low-cost federal loans, part of the so-called Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing program, to Ford Motor Co., Nissan Motor Co. and electric carmaker Tesla Motors Inc. to help fund production of fuel-efficient autos at U.S. factories. Fisker has yet to deliver its US$80,000 Karma model, which is designed to travel 50 miles (80 kilometers) on lithium-ion battery power before its gasoline engine engages.

The government loans to Fisker, exceeding the US$465-million awarded to Tesla, are the largest to a startup carmaker that has yet to begin high-volume electric-vehicle production.

According to the Wall Street Journal today, page B6, these Fisker cars will be manufactured in Finland. Either the LA Times has it wrong or the Wall Street Journal has it wrong.

- Aggie

Those of you still massaging your shins from bumping into the furniture during Earth Hour might like to know how Inconvenient Al Gore observed this hallowed time:

As most of you know, just over two years ago, my organization, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, found that the knuckleheaded leader of the global warming alarmism movement, Al Gore, consumes 20 times more electricity in his home than the average American household.

Since Earth Hour was recognized today, Saturday, March 28 from 8:30-9:30pm, I thought I’d see how the hypocritical, fear-mongering former Veep was celebrating at his home.

I pulled up to Al’s house, located in the posh Belle Meade section of Nashville, at 8:48pm – right in the middle of Earth Hour. I found that the main spotlights that usually illuminate his 9,000 square foot mansion were dark, but several of the lights inside the house were on.

In fact, most of the windows were lit by the familiar blue-ish hue indicating that floor lamps and ceiling fixtures were off, but TV screens and computer monitors were hard at work.

…

The kicker, though, were the dozen or so floodlights grandly highlighting several trees and illuminating the driveway entrance of Gore’s mansion.

I [kid] you not, my friends, the savior of the environment couldn’t be bothered to turn off the gaudy lights that show off his goofy trees.

This is hardly news anymore. The man behind the blackout curtain is burning 150 watt bulbs and making microwave popcorn to watch March Madness on his multiple widescreen TVs.

Which gives him a lot in common with this fellow observer:

Rush Limbaugh is celebrating Earth Hour just like everybody else. Although he’s planning on doing it a bit differently. Earlier this week, he announced on his radio show that he’s making it much more festive.

“I have the ability from my couch, wherever I happen to be, I can turn on very light in the place, on all five houses. I can turn on the air conditioner and I can regulate the air conditioner. So I lit my place up like a Christmas tree last night.

“At 8:30 on Saturday night, I’m going to do the same thing. I mean, I might even put a Christmas tree up! I might even put Christmas lights on the outside lights, on the outside landscaping.

Atta lovable little fuzzball.

Gore/Limbaugh in ‘12!

UPDATE
Gore says bogus.

UPPERDATE
Accuser says I’m rubber, you’re glue:

I have time-stamped pictures of the floodlights illuminating Al Gore’s driveway entrance and several trees between 8:40-9:00pm during “Earth Hour,” which is certainly an inconvenient truth for Mr. Gore.