For burning lots of jet fuel spreading panic around the globe, Al Gore gets a Nobel Peace Prize. But if he really thinks his global warming theory could withstand public scrutiny, why not run for president?
The former vice president is supposedly the greatest debater in the world. CNN's "Larry King Live" saw him wipe the floor with Ross Perot on NAFTA in 1993. He also out-soundbited Jack Kemp in the 1996 vice-presidential debate.
But in 2000, an unlikely challenger — a Texan given to mangling language — was to puncture Gore's aura of invincibility. Al's sighs of impatience while debating George W. Bush symbolized the frustration of the liberal elite when confounded by simple horse sense.
Maybe those seven-year-old chinks in his armor are why Gore steadfastly refuses to debate climate experts who challenge his alarmist hypotheses. As the Cato Institute's Patrick Michaels points out: "The fact is that Al has ducked, feinted, dived away from, or fluffed each and every opportunity for a reasoned debate with any global warming scientist not of his choice."
Earlier this year, Gore at the last minute scaredy-catted out of an interview with Denmark's biggest newspaper and "Skeptical Environmentalist" author Bjorn Lomborg. Gauntlets have also been thrown down by Cato and Chicago's Heartland Institute.
Look at some of Gore's distortions:
• He conveniently ignores the 98% of Antarctica that has actually cooled in the last 35 years to focus on the 2% that is warming.
• His film "An Inconvenient Truth" depicts Florida going underwater, yet that would take a 13-foot ocean rise; the U.N. forecasts a mean sea-level increase of only 13 inches by the century's end.
• Gore's movie shows a polar bear drowning in search of icebergs; the polar bear population has quintupled in 40 years.
If Al Gore really believes all that hot air, then why not enter the world's brightest spotlight: the presidential sweepstakes?
(Don't hold your breath.)
