Al Gore is beside himself with anguish. He wants tornados to be linked with global warming. He has the formula all worked out: more destruction = more coverage = a national dialogue about climate change – again. It’s depraved – and a bit hypocritical since he sold his coveted Current TV to the oil-rich owners of the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera network. Yet, it’ll be the same show all over again. People will become worried, but when they find out that these environmentalists intend to tax and spend their way to a green utopia – they’ll balk at their agenda.
Zack Colman of the Hill wrote on June 11 that:
Former Vice President Al Gore lamented on Tuesday that scientists “won’t let us yet” link tornadoes to climate change.
[…]
ore said there’s a political interest in determining climate change causes extreme weather. He said lawmakers cannot address the root of disasters without first making a connection between emissions, climate change and extreme weather.
Failing to acknowledge that connection will imperil future relief efforts as disasters grow more frequent and expensive, Gore said.
“There are beginning to be big arguments in this building about whether we can afford to clean up these disasters,” noting the congressional battles over providing relief aid following Hurricane Sandy and the Moore tornado.
Insurance agencies and climate activists contend the government will be increasingly on the hook for disaster cleanup as a result of climate change. They say storms are growing fiercer, subjecting more areas to disaster-related damage that private insurers are hesitant to cover.
Gore advocated putting a price on carbon to limit emissions as a way to subdue those incidents.
Granted, carbon taxes are transparent. For example, consumers can calculate how much they’re paying right there at the gas pump, but it’s part of a dubious green agenda that is dependent on the discredited notion that government will invest the additional revenue wisely. Plus, it’s a new tax pitched to us during a weak recovery, which will only exacerbate our current economic torpor.
Yet, I can see why Al Gore wants to plunge the nation into global warming monomania, since the New York Times reported on June 10 about the sudden decrease in global temperatures.
The rise in the surface temperature of earth has been markedly slower over the last 15 years than in the 20 years before that. And that lull in warming has occurred even as greenhouse gases have accumulated in the atmosphere at a record pace.
The slowdown is a bit of a mystery to climate scientists. True, the basic theory that predicts a warming of the planet in response to human emissions does not suggest that warming should be smooth and continuous. To the contrary, in a climate system still dominated by natural variability, there is every reason to think the warming will proceed in fits and starts.
But given how much is riding on the scientific forecast, the practitioners of climate science would like to understand exactly what is going on. They admit that they do not, even though some potential mechanisms of the slowdown have been suggested. The situation highlights important gaps in our knowledge of the climate system, some of which cannot be closed until we get better measurements from high in space and from deep in the ocean.
Before the scandals, Obama promised to address this threat to the world. It seems that isn’t going to happen anytime soon.
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