Al Gore is once again making headlines with his lies and exaggerated claims of global eco-catastrophy. In his Monday address at the UN Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen, the former U.S. vice president ominously warned that new data shows the North Pole could be ice free in the summer by 2014.
Gore based his claim on what he called "fresh" research by Dr. Wieslav Maslowski with the U.S. Naval Post-Graduate School. "I don’t know when they were released, but I just got them yesterday," Gore said of the data. "Some of the models suggest to Dr. Maslowski that there is a 75 percent chance that the entire polar ice cap during some of the summer months could be completely ice free within the next five to seven years." Gore underscored the severity of the situation, stating, "It’s hard to capture the astonishment that the experts in the science of ice felt when they saw this."
However, it was not melting ice that astonished Dr. Maslowski. "It’s unclear to me how this figure was arrived at," he told the UK Times online. "I would never try to estimate likelihood at anything as exact as this." The Times reported Gore’s office backpedaled, admitting the estimate was a "ballpark figure" from a conversation several years ago between Gore and Maslowski. Gore’s staff explained in a formal statement he intended to say the polar ice cap would be "nearly" ice free, according to an update in the Times. The article pointed to Gore’s track record of basing claims on unpublished data rather than scientific consensus. Dr. Maslowski clarified that his research identifies polar ice "beyond 2020," even though Gore’s formal statement stubbornly maintained the five-year window based on the U.S. Navy data.
Gore’s latest blunder is hardly his first eco-faux pas. In 2007 the High Court in London identified nine errors in Gore’s film An Inconvenient Truth, which the UK government had sent to all secondary schools in England. The judge in the case stated were it not for the government’s follow up sending information explaining the mainstream scientific position on the errors to the schools, he would have ruled its distribution of the film an "unlawful contravention of an Act of Parliament prohibiting the political indoctrination of children," reported the Science of Public Policy Institute. The errors claim human-generated greenhouse gases are at fault for:
1. forcing a sea level rise of 6 meters (20 feet) in the near future;
2. drowning low-lying Pacific islands in coming decades;
3. plunging Europe into an ice age;
4. driving up levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide, thereby dangerously increasing temperatures (The High Court found even the research on which Gore based his film made clear throughout history increases in CO2 concentration have followed rather than preceded increases in global temperatures.);
5. melting the snow on Mount Kilimanjaro in Africa;
6. drying up Lake Chad in Africa;
7. creating Hurricane Katrina;
8. killing polar bears; and
9. bleaching coral reefs.
When a reporter questioned him recently at a press conference about whether he plans to correct the errors, Gore dodged the question, and the journalist was forced from the microphone.
Gore’s latest fib at Copenhagen in the wake of Climategate casts even more doubt over climate science and the work taking place at Copenhagen that skeptics say is intended to set up an energy-regulating global government. Lord Christopher Monckton, former policy advisor to UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher told Glen Beck on his November 8 broadcast the Framework Convention on Climate Change being negotiated now in Copenhagen says, "there is going to be a world government." He went on to explain specific provisions in the treaty. "I’ve negotiated international treaties… I’ve interpreted them. I’ve even written them. And never before have I seen the word ‘government’ put in a treaty in this capacity. They’re going to close down the free market… They’re going to take powers in that treaty to operate in interference of and control of all financial markets worldwide. They are going to take a tax of two percent on every financial transaction into… a rich country like America."
Monckton credited the idea of global government based on environmental regulation to Sir Maurice Strong, who set up the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 25 years ago for that purpose. He accused Jacques Chirac and Al Gore of carrying Strong’s torch. "This is something which is being menaced everywhere you look. And now they’ve put the word government in the treaty, and they have given this body powers which I have never seen transferred before to any transnational entity by any treaty, ever."
Photo of Al Gore: AP Images
