LET US PREY THE CHURCH OF GORE SCIENCE HAS NO TOLERANCE FOR HERETICS. BY TIM FINDLEY

l Gore is one scary dude. Even if you co-creator Larry David, lovingly incorporates believe only a part of his nightmare Gore’s younger days with photos and news Avision of melting ice caps and starva- film that fawns on the former vice president’s tion droughts, it’s enough to cause you worry. rise to his great revelation. The cinematic Skeptics suggest, however, that what the for- composition of “” mer vice president is really doing is meant to mirrors David’s passionate digital environ- galvanize a movement into an ecopolitical mentalism and has the help of huge party more frightening to freedom than any screens portraying graphics of ominously mere meltdown. overwhelming charts. There’s even a Any way it goes, critics say, Gore and his heartbreaking digitally created polar religiously faithful green congregation bear facing certain lonely doom. The intend to shape their “moral imperative” bear, reminiscent of the spotted owl into demagogic power still beyond the that helped Gore and Clinton shut imaginations of most well-meaning down Pacific Northwest logging, might Americans. make the kiddies cry (although it is a What is perhaps more disturbing is pure fabrication), but the massive graphs the truth about who occupies the most of rising CO2 leave everybody feeling a important “Pews” in the church. The for- little queasy. mer vice president has some disciples he The church of Gore science has no seldom introduces. Among them are a selec- tolerance for heretics—“deniers,” as He tion of the richest and most powerful busi- calls them. There is very little patience ness executives on the endangered planet, even for sympathetic agnostics who beginning with Goldman Sachs, the corpo- agree with the condition of climate rate investment giant whose chief executive change but won’t accept the premise officer last year put aside his position as that industrialized society is either chairman of the board of The Nature solely to blame or ultimately capa- Conservancy to become U.S. secretary of ble of solving the problem. the Treasury. Others include the Sun Oil- Anthropogenic (human- created Pew Trust, Du Pont, Texaco, based) activity, particularly in the British Petroleum, Toyota, and, most overconsuming United States, is recently, General Motors. the sinful cause, Gore preaches as Baptized by Gore in his self-pro- he rides a cherry-picker pulpit claimed mission to make “saving the high above the crowd to illustrate earth’s environment…the central organiz- the projected extent of the rising ing element of the post-Cold War world,” red horns of carbon dioxide in the the corporate disciples have already set atmosphere, which he expects by up their altars in what General Electric 2050 to doom the planet, unless we CEO Jeffrey Immelt describes as “a act now. time period where environmental No serious scientist disagrees with improvement is going to lead to prof- LOOK, UP IN THE SKY! that, he sermonizes, “zero. Not one.” itability.” And that’s another of the biblical pro- “An Inconvenient Truth,” the film IT’S, WELL, JUST THE SUN, nouncements that bothers many, by Laurie David, does deal with the AND THE HEAT’S ON including at least some of the 17,000 horrors of global warming, but it is scientists whose signatures appeared on also a paean to Gore himself. It seam- FOR AND a petition questioning that conclusion lessly wanders away from its theme to or its implications as early as 1997. muse on Gore’s own life and his dis- GLOBAL WARMING. As recently as June 2007, noted appointment at losing the 2000 elec- environmental scientist Eric Steig, who tion. “We just have to get by it,” he is heard to been banished by the Supreme Court and studies arctic ice cores cited by Gore, joined sigh as the film shows him gazing soulfully despite winning the popular vote. other scientists in objecting to claims of “sci- out the window of a helicopter after having Filmmaker David, the wife of “Seinfeld” entific consensus” requiring government

ILLUSTRATION BY JOHN BARDWELL. 10 • RANGE MAGAZINE • FALL 2007 action on global warming. “In general,” Steig School where, in less than two years, he Armand Hammer or bragging about being said, “the certainty with which this chapter flunked out. He tried law school after that the model for Eric Segal’s “Love Story,”Gore presents our understanding of abrupt climate with largely the same result; too distracted, he has a pattern of manipulating facts to inflate change is overstated. There is confusion said, by his other obligations. his own importance and virtue. Word spread betwen hypothesis and evidence through that No, his mother knew best. The future that he claimed he had “invented” the Inter- chapter, a a great deal of confusion on the dif- ecomessiah was not destined for higher edu- net. Actually, what he said in a TV interview ferences between an abrupt ‘climate change’ cation or media fame; he belonged in politics, was that he “created” the link and possible, hypothetical causes of such cli- just like his dad, a former Tennessee school- between scientists in the government with mate changes.” teacher prodded into running for office also passage of his “High Performance Computer And Josph Bast, president of Heartland by Gore’s mother. and Communications” Act in 1991, some- Institute, wrote: “It is now abundantly clear In the film, Al Jr. lovingly remembers thing many agree opened what Gore himself why Al Gore will not accept our debate chal- those days growing up, splitting his time called “the information superhighway” to all lenge. The supposed scientific consensus on between the family-owned Fairfax Hotel in of us. global warming is pure fiction.” Al doesn’t really lie; he just has a way of In the film, and especially later at the “IT IS NOW ABUNDANTLY CLEAR WHY ignoring the truth. When he took all that Oscars, Gore looks a bit like a frumpily aging AL GORE WILL NOT ACCEPT OUR money from a Buddhist temple during the Superman who is letting his belly get a little DEBATE CHALLENGE. THE SUPPOSED 1996 campaign, he honestly said there was out of control. You’d have to know that “Sein- SCIENTIFIC CONSENSUS ON GLOBAL “no prevailing authority” telling him not to. feld” included an image of Superman in every WARMING IS PURE FICTION.” And salting away the clean-burning coal episode to make that much of it, but film- JOSEPH BAST, PRESIDENT, HEARTLAND INSTITUTE reserves of Utah’s Grand Staircase Escalante as maker David doesn’t miss the opportunity to a monument had nothing he knew of to do imply superhero status to the one-time Washington, D.C., where he was really raised, with Chinese contributions making their way reporter secretly on a mission to save the and the family’s Tennessee farm, where he to the White House. planet. says he spent four months every year, In the film, Gore concedes that he felt Gore says that while he was at Harvard in although critics say it was less. guilty about his father raising tobacco, espe- 1967, he was first awakened to global warm- “My dad was cattle breeder of the year,”he cially when his sister died of lung cancer. He ing by his “mentor,” Dr. Roger Revelle. “[Rev- says in the film, as it shows one of the Black doesn’t mention that he later railed at a U.N. elle] was startled by what he found in his Angus on his Tennessee pasture. He doesn’t meeting that smoking was a major factor in study ofCO2 and I soaked it up like a mention that Al Gore Sr. got those prize bulls creating global warming. He doesn’t claim sponge,”Gore says. as a gift from his political buddy Armand that Gore Black Angus never have flatulence, Revelle has since died, but not before Hammer, founder of Occidental Oil Compa- but the guru of global warming also believes working with former NASA climate scientist ny, and identified before his death in 1990 as methane from cattle is a major contributor. Frederick Singer, who has for years been an agent of the Soviet Union for the past 40 But it’s oil and the wasteful use of fossil Gore’s nemesis, a man whom Gore accuses of years or more. Al Gore Sr.’s main role with the fuel that he blames for most of it. That may being in the employ of the big oil companies cattle, critics have reported, was to extort explain why—in the largest disposal of U.S. (something Singer adamantly denies). political contacts to pay extreme prices for resources in history, and in what would have Before he died in 1991, Revelle produced a Black Angus they didn’t really need. been a major scandal only 20 years earlier— paper with Singer suggesting that people But no matter, aside from what he says in Gore (in 1998) engineered the sale of the Elk should not be made to become alarmed over the film was his great delight as a youngster Hills Naval Oil Reserve to Occidental Petrole- the “greenhouse effect” and global warming. working in his father’s tobacco sheds, young um, the company owned by his dad’s old “Drastic, precipitous and, especially, uni- Al was never a farmer. Nor was he the segre- buddy Armand Hammer, who had awarded lateral steps to delay the putative greenhouse gationist his father was said to be. Fresh out of the elder Gore with a lucrative shareholding impacts can cost jobs and prosperity and Harvard, young Al was a liberal who knew the position on the “Occi” board after he left the increase the human costs of global poverty, world was doomed. First though, there was Senate. without being effective,” the article, subtitled the romance with Tipper, who would become Young Gore had developed a vision of a “Look before you leap,”said. his wife and mother of their four children. new world by that time; one, he said, that It was a Judas kiss to Gore, who was In that is the first of the urban legends he should be shared by rich and poor alike. And already conducting congressional hearings managed to promote about himself while he since most of the rich were in the United meant to produce just the sort of alarm his was vice president. He just let slip at one point States, he advised them to step down a little. To former mentor was saying was unnecessary. that he and Tipper had been the model for a group of Future Farmers of America, the Gore suggested that the professor had become Eric Segal’s huge bestseller, “Love Story.” Segal, vice president suggested that they reconsider the victim of Alzheimer’s disease. who attended Harvard at the same time and their ambition to work the land, on the basis After Harvard, where despite Cs and Ds lived across the hall from them, corrected that that in the future most of the food would be on his transcript, he managed to graduate only a bit later by saying that actually Tommy grown in what was then called the Third cum laude, Gore was working as a reporter for Lee Jones and Al Gore had been the model for World. The Tennessean and wavering from the pres- his lead character in the book. Who was going It all started coming together for him, sure of his mother especially to enter politics, to argue with the vice president, who already Gore says, in the 1997 Kyoto Conference in and his own desire to carry out his faith by had a job and didn’t need a role in that movie? Japan. By then, Gore had already written his enrolling in Vanderbilt University Divinity Whether rationalizing his family’s ties to first gospel, “,” and knew

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he would find more followers among the feeling” heirs. tokens of reform. But they also may not know increasingly strong nongovernmental orga- Doubters like Singer and others don’t the full truth. nizations (NGOs) attaching themselves with- have a chance against the kind of power that Those big corporate leaders like Gold- out any accountability to the United Nations. has captured everything from the European man Sachs and British Petroleum apparently The NGOs own egg was hatched in the 1992 Union to Time magazine already. Another got religion after 1999 riots by leftists shut Rio de Janeiro “Earth Summit” in Brazil, run at the White House risks disappointing down the World Trade Organization confer- where world-planning Agenda 21 was creat- somebody, even if Gore just can’t resist his last ence in Seattle. The rioters were fresh with the ed, virtually without any representative gov- chance. But perhaps the scariest thing is that mandate they considered granted to them by ernment help at all. Gore doesn’t have to wait for time to prove the Rio de Janeiro UN/NGO conference cre- Al Gore does not allow much time for him and his minions right about global ating Agenda 21 and the International Panel people in general to evaluate global warming. warming. When the door is already open, the on Climate Change. Rather than allow a mob “It’s not a political issue; it’s a moral issue,” he hungry tiger doesn’t offer choices. to grow into an international problem in the repeatedly says. There will be no elections on Quoting Winston Churchill, in what way of the new global economy, the smart the subject, unless perhaps you count 2008 almost sounds like extortion, Gore says in the action was determined to be simply playing when it may become a campaign issue, as it film that what lies ahead is “a period of conse- the protestors’ own game. already is in Australia. But, whatever, Gore quences.” It can’t hurt though, can it, to go And Gore himself, just as he had with the obviously doesn’t think it will require majori- along with a program that would, after all, Internet, helped make it possible by suggest- ty approval to carry out the ritual, not when improve the planet, even if it can’t really pre- ing ways the industrialized world might pay full-blown marketing and propaganda can vent some catastrophe? Paper instead of plas- off developing nations with carbon offsets. work better. tic, better fuel efficiency, less wasteful light In the 10th century of Christianity, the The wholly convinced followers of the bulbs, and recycled materials are easy enough Catholic Church raised money by allowing Gore church don’t offer to debate as they for all of us to take. sinners to buy “indulgences,” earning them a make use of plentiful foundation funds to Concern for the environment is not limit- little slack for eternity. Carbon offsets work reach into schools, statehouses, news media ed to only one side of political differences in about the same way, although already some in and cartoons in a massive campaign that the United States. The essential difference is in developing nations have begun calling them offers training to thousands of volunteers how much responsibility the United States “Carbon Colonialism.” Got a smokestack you willing to prove themselves worthy. should assume for what climate problems can’t fix right away? Buy some trees in Patago- The money for it, ironically, comes from there may be. Gore excites a mass that has nia, or a windmill in Africa, whether the locals trusts that were founded with oil wells and long wanted to chase the moneylenders from need it or not. administered by fatcat and, some say, “guilty- the temple. They will not be stopped by mere Corporate eyes lit up at the prospects.

“THIS IS NOT A POLITICAL ISSUE, CAN PREVENT A DISASTROUS RISE IN IT’S A MORAL ISSUE” GLOBAL WARMING” The “moral high ground” on global While even scientists who disagree with warming is being established with enormous PRO human-produced CO2 as the cause of global economic and political implications, particu- warming also say that a reduction in fossil fuel larly to the United States, which is held to emissions will be beneficial, most of them blame for the bulk of the problems created by &CON doubt the “Kyoto targets” can have more than CO2 emissions. Economist George Reisman a minor impact on climate change. In fact, of Pepperdine University has said that meet- By Tim Findley some scientists argue that studies apart from ing United Nations’ goals for reduction of alarmists’ computer models indicate the emissions in the United States would result in entists have complained of attempts to pres- warming trend begun in 1990 halted natural- “economic devastation.” So-called “develop- sure or intimidate them into accepting that ly in 1998. ing nations” such as China and India would premise, but reputable climate scientists all Others, led by NASA scientist James be exempt from dire reductions in emissions over the world argue that global warming is Hansen, predict a “tipping point” by at most in order to allow them to “catch up” with the mainly the result of solar activity which can 2016 when global warming will be unstop- richer western world. But the political reality be seen on Neptune and Mars as well, and pable. Coincidentally, the doomsday tipping is that by reducing production and consumer which has happened before in geologic histo- point comes at the end of the next two U.S. use in the U.S. and other “developed” nations, ry, long before the use of fossil fuels. presidential terms of office. the impact would be felt most by imposing Despite disagreements among scientists, conditions of new poverty on their citizens. the apparent “bandwagon” rush to agree that “THE EVIDENCE OF GLOBAL humans are responsible for global warming is WARMING IS APPARENT IN MELTING “THERE IS A CONSENSUS AMONG orchestrated more by political agenda than by GLACIERS, SEVERE WEATHER, AND SCIENTISTS THAT GLOBAL WARMING general scientific knowledge or agreement. LOSS OF ANIMAL SPECIES” IS PRIMARILY THE RESULT OF Glaciers have been melting since the HUMAN ACTIVITY” “ONLY IMMEDIATE AND DRASTIC end of the Ice Age 12,000 years ago and There is no such “consensus.” Several sci- ACTION TO REDUCE CO2 EMISSIONS the Little Ice Age (1600-1900). A similar

12 • RANGE MAGAZINE • FALL 2007 There is money to be made by sending cash company, London-based Generation Invest- polar bears aren’t drowning and Hurricane to Kyoto-absolved China and charging con- ment Management, which he formed with Katrina wasn’t caused by global warming. The sumers for what it costs. Who really pays in Goldman Sachs executive David Blood. sun and even the warming earth core may be the end? It’s not the CEOs. Time magazine, uncritically supportive more responsible for the problem. Even in the Goldman Sachs was so enthused about it, of the need to act on global warming (April 9, unlikely case CO2 reaches the extremes Gore the Wall Street firm formed the Center for 2007), produced a list of 50 things us com- predicts, nothing short of reverting to a soci- Environmental Markets. “We believe,” the mon folk can do to help. Beyond the usual ety like that before the Industrial Revolution company said in a statement that paper versus plastic and new light bulbs, the will have more than a minimal effect on it. had a Nature Conservancy ring magazine suggests more of us become vege- Only time alone will settle the question. to it,“that the management of tarians as we reduce our herds of gaseous live- But in the film, Gore stands upon his risks and opportunities stock. Humans also puff methane and cherry-picker pulpit high above the crowd arising from climate and bulb by bag by change and its regulation GORE IS MORE THAN JUST A better mileage pro- will be particularly sig- PROPHET. HE HAS IT IN HIS CAPACITY claims that we can nificant and will garner go back to “our increasing attention TO BECOME A DEMOGOGUE IN THE emissions in the from capital market PULPIT OF POLITICAL ECOLOGY, AND nineteen seventies.” participants.” Little HE MUST KNOW THAT. Useless as that guys with light bulbs might even be, need not apply. breathe out CO2, but it’s only the most economists say the cost would be 2.3 percent Though he doesn’t radical of the righteous who openly of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product. mention it as he flies suggest reducing our population as Al Gore preaches to the choir, but that’s by private jet to his well. not what makes him scary. It’s when he says, $20,000-plus appear- Did you know that Hitler was a “Let us Prey,” and they all reply, “A-Men”— ances to show “An nonsmoking vegetarian? like red-robed monks of the Inquisition. That Inconvenient Truth,” Al Unfair, unfair. Al Gore has clearly should start the real worry. ■ Gore is, of course, on paid his dues as a public servant, and the cutting edge of paying off for his carbon he doesn’t really lie. He is no tyrant and not Tim Findley didn’t invent the Internet, footprint. It is worth noting, however, that yet a saint. The scientific arguments against but he did have a role in a seldom-seen cowboy movie. most of that carbon offset goes to his own his “Inconvenient Truth” include the facts that

warming period in the 11th century, long unsure. too many people on earth creating condi- before the industrial use of fossil fuels, In 1975, Newsweek magazine covered tions for the big freeze. He predicted that a permitted a great period of exploration, itself in the doomsday forecast of a new ice billion people might starve to death in the including the Viking settlement of Green- age the writers called “ominous.” 1980s. land when it was actually green. Other “The drop in food output could begin But in 1979, the temperature of the historic warming periods produced bene- quite soon,” the article said, “perhaps only earth started to rise again. And by 1980, ficial results in greater crop production 10 years from now.” new doomsayer Dr. James Hansen of and expanded lands for farming. Even the Following on the 1970 Earth Day apoca- Columbia University was testifying before current period of warming has shown lyptic predictions of Stanford scientist Paul Sen. Al Gore about the ultimate dangers of similar results in some areas with longer Ehrlich, the magazine cited “the most devas- global warming. He suggested that the ulti- growing seasons and healthier crops. In tating outbreaks of tornadoes ever recorded” mate cause of it was too many people on any case, despite alarmist claims, the seas in 1974 as part of the evidence of funda- earth causing greenhouse warming. are not rising beyond long-term measure- mental changes in the world’s weather. Interesting that presumptive “scientists” ments, and polar bears, to use the cited “The central fact is that after three quar- like Ehrlich and Hansen presenting oppo- example of species threatened, are actual- ters of a century of extraordinarily mild site versions of catastrophe in a mere 10 ly increasing in numbers. conditions, the earth’s climate seems to be years nevertheless come to the same con- cooling down,” the article warned. It sug- clusion as to the cause—too many people “BUT THE REAL EVIDENCE CAN BE gested that among the solutions to the on earth. SEEN IN THE POLAR ICE CAPS, “grim reality” might be man-made melting Both Ehrlich and Hansen blamed U.S. WHICH ARE SHRINKING” of the Arctic ice cap. economic growth as the major problem. It Again, scientists disagree among them- World temperatures, the magazine is not a far leap from what German Nazis selves. The Arctic appears to be shrinking, reported reliable scientists as saying, had concluded in 1938. but the Antarctic ice sheet shows signs of been falling since 1940, leading to concur- Ehrlich, by the way, is still regarded as a shrinking in some areas while expanding in rence with Ehrlich’s gloomy outlook of ice respected climate scientist. Hansen has his others. Global warming may be responsible age famine in his book, “The Population bets on the table. ■ for both conditions, but scientists are still Bomb,” which suggested there were already

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