FROM CANADA'S NATIONAL POST

HEAD: Do as Al says, not as Al does

On Thursday, former U. S. vice-president Al Gore delivered a major address
calling on his country to abandon all fossil fuels within 10 years. By 2018,
U. S. electricity and fuel should come entirely from "renewable energy and
truly clean, carbon-free sources," he said. Tickets to the event encouraged
attendees to "please use public transit, bicycling or other climate-friendly
means" to reach the lecture hall.

So how did Mr. Gore and his retinue arrive? In two Lincoln Town Cars and a
full-sized SUV that sat idling with the air conditioners blasting while the
Gore party was inside.

It was 34 C (93 F) in Washington. Al Gore can't be expected to get into an
overheated vehicle after he's worked up a sweat telling others how to save
the planet.

Remember, too, the Nobel prizewinning environmentalist lives in a Tennessee
mansion that produces a carbon footprint 20 times that of the average
American home. A sizeable chunk of his personal fortune comes from royalties
on a zinc mine which had to be temporarily closed five years ago in part
because the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency ruled it one of the
worst-polluting mine sites in America. Illegal toxins were frequently
discharged into nearby rivers.

Mr. Gore's Live Earth benefit concert last summer flew scores of rock bands
to stages around the world in carbon-spewing private jets. To cover the
emissions from his own frequent use of private jets, Mr. Gore set up a
company that buys carbon offsets, so that in effect he is paying himself for
his carbon indulgences, writing off the expense on one hand, while pocketing
the proceeds on the other.

Apparently if the world is ever to reach the carbon-free future Mr. Gore
dreams of, it will have to get there without Al's help.

But take heart, there is increasing evidence that man-made carbon dioxide
may not be causing global warming. Indeed, there is increasing debate in the
scientific community whether there is even any warming occurring at all. Mr.
Gore might just be able to keep going from jet to limo to estate guilt-free
(if not carbon-free) for as long as he wishes.

On Tuesday, the Associated Press reported that seven mountain glaciers in
northern California were advancing. They joined glaciers in southern Norway,
Sweden, the New Zealand Alps and the Hindu Kush mountains of Pakistan.
Indeed, worldwide, there are nearly half as many glaciers advancing as
retreating.

How did the AP explain this? Well, all the shrinking glaciers it mentioned
in its story were melting due to global warming, while the growing ones were
"benefitting from changing weather patterns." Glacier melt is proof of a
climate crisis, while--on the same planet, under the same global
conditions --glacier melt is chalked up as a mere natural phenomenon.

Facts that don't fit the global-warming dogma -- call them inconvenient
truths -- are to be dismissed as unimportant. Only those that feed the
environmental hysteria are proof of something ominous.

So I'm sure they're entirely inconsequential, but here, anyway, are some
anecdotes that cast doubt on the notion that emissions from our SUVs and
power plants are dangerously harming the climate.

Greenland isn't melting. And while Arctic sea ice may have thinned in the
past three decades by about 3%% per decade, according to the U. S. National
Snow and Ice Date Center, Antarctic ice (which is about 20 times as
voluminous as the Arctic kind) has grown by 1%% per decade,

Also, after last summer's record melt in the Arctic, this summer's melt in
Antarctica was the smallest on record. And NASA satellites have found that
Arctic Sea ice coverage this year is more than one million square
kilo-metres greater than last year's, greater than the average of the last
three years and 10-20 centimetres thicker than in 2007. According to
observations by the Danish Meteorological Institute, we "have to go back 15
years to find ice expansion so far south."

Snow coverage in North America this winter was greater than at any time in
recorded history. China had its worst winter in a century, and the southern
hemisphere its worst in the past 50 years.

And while global temperatures increased slightly in June, through the end of
May, the nine-month decline in temperatures beginning in September was
greater (0.8C) than all the warming of the 20th century (0.6C).

All of this may prove nothing (although if these signals pointed toward
warming, you can bet they'd be billed as proof a coming climate
catastrophe). But they should at least give Mr. Gore comfort that he need
not sacrifice his high-carbon lifestyle just to prove he can walk the walk.
********
"Flatulent pig" more and more describes Al Gore. Think 9Titties, Beetle,
Eater of Dung, Priggy Timmy Turmoil (Jello Biafra...really!!) and others of
their ill ilk will catch on? Not a chance!

Dionysus