Al Gore-Latest Nobel Travesty

The Nobel Awards Committee has once again shown its true Leftist colors by awarding its coveted Peace Prize to former vice president and environmentalist whacko extraordinaire Al Gore. This may top the 2002 award to Jimmy "I never met a communist dictator I didn't like" Carter for its transparence in advancing a political agenda.

Much has been written on these pages about the fallacies surrounding so-called "man-made global warming" so I won't delve into that any further. However, Bjørn Lomborg, an adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School and author of "Cool It and The Skeptical Environmentalist," has written an insightful editorial contrasting the thorough, scientific research of co-prize winner, the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) with Gore's emotional, fear-laden claims in his over hyped "documentary," An Inconvenient Truth.

As Lomborg states, Gore told the world in his Academy Award-winning movie (recently labeled "one-sided" and containing "scientific errors" by a British judge) to expect 20-foot sea-level rises over this century. But the IPCC concluded that sea levels will rise between only a half-foot and two feet during this century, with their best expectation being about one foot -- similar to what the world experienced over the past 150 years. By the way, that British judge's ruling required schools not to make the watching of Gore's movie mandatory and, if it was included in the curriculum, that there would be a chance for opposing viewpoints to be heard as well. Would that more of our judges in America were like this one.

Lomborg spends the rest of his article deconstructing Gore's myths about our planet one by one. For example, Gore is nearly hysterical about the apparently accelerating ice melting in Greenland, but the IPCC projects only a three-inch rise in the ocean's level by the end of this century as a result. Gore also conveniently ignores the fact that Greenland experienced warmer temperatures in 1941 than today. Lomborg also points out that the cost of reducing carbon dioxide emissions may far outweigh the benefits in the long run. Not only that, warming will have an upside in preventing more deaths from excessively cold weather than lives lost due to increased heat.

Lomborg does not intend to completely debunk global warming and in fact has high praise for the work of the IPCC. Hardly a conservative, he simply cites other problems such as HIV/AIDS, hunger, and lack of drinking water as deserving of more attention at this time in history than the perceived need for massive CO2 reductions.

Unfortunately, voices of reason such as Lomborg's may be few and far between now that Gore's efforts have been stamped with the imprimatur of the Nobel committee. Like the heavyweight boxer who wears his championship belt wherever he goes, Gore can be more smug than ever (if that can be imagined) about anyone challenging his now-sacred beliefs, knowing that he has the power of the prize as well as a largely fawning media in his corner.

Much has been made about an alleged claim from Gore's camp that, if he won the Nobel Prize, he would then seek the presidency again. My prediction is that he will not do this without some very careful consideration. That Nobel could lose some of its luster rather quickly if he jumped into the race only to flame out against his well-financed, front-running nemesis, Senator Clinton. As conservatives, we can certainly hope that if Gore decides to run, he will be effective enough to throw some dry nails on the track of the well-oiled Clinton machine. And that if Clinton and Gore battled enough to weaken each other, the door would be open for a Republican (maybe even conservative) candidate to win the election.

Gore has a zealous draft committee pressuring him to throw his hat in the ring for the Democrat nomination. If he can throw his party's Hillary coronation into chaos in the process, I would say, in the words of our president, "Bring it on."