PrintOctober 14, 2009
Gore On The Grill
Last Friday, global warming's poster boy, Al Gore, spoke to the Society of Environmental Journalists' convention in Madison, Wisconsin. After his speech to this flock of propagandists, there was a rare Q and A session. Among those asking a question was Irish filmmaker Phelim McAleer, director of Not Evil, Just Wrong, a movie critical of the global warming movement.
McAleer queried Gore about a 2007 decision by the British High Court which determined that Gore's global warming flick, An Inconvenient Truth, was so packed with fraud that it required a 56-page disclaimer if it was to continue to be shown to students in the United Kingdom.
McAleer asked, "The judge in the British High Court, after a lengthy hearing, found that there were nine significant errors [in the movie]. This has been shown to children. Do you accept those findings, and have you done anything to correct those errors?
Gore brushed off the question by going straight to the heartstrings of the useful idiots assembled in the room: he talked about the court's criticism of the film's claim that polar bears are an endangered species. "You don't think they're endangered?" Gore demanded of McAleer.
We'll get to the truth about polar bears in a moment, but first some insight into the U.K. court case.
It was filed by Stewart Dimmock, a father of two, who challenged his government's decision to provide every secondary school in England with a copy of Gore's movie as part of a nationwide environmental campaign. Filing suit in court, his lawyers argued that film lacked balance and aimed at influencing, rather than informing, the students.
Amazingly, The United Kingdom's High Court in London agreed with Dimmock and determined that An Inconvenient Truth contains "alarmist and exaggerated" content which can only be legally shown to school children if accompanied by a warning regarding the film's blatant "political brainwashing."
In his ruling, Judge Michael Burton said the "apocalyptic vision presented in the film was politically partisan and thus not an impartial scientific analysis of climate change." It was, he continued, the work of a "talented politician and communicator, to make a political statement and to support a political program."
In its synopsis of the movie, the film's distributor, Paramount, makes the judge's case:
Humanity is sitting on a ticking time bomb. If the vast majority of the world's scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced.
Judge Burton diffused the time bomb by mandating the creation of the detailed instructor's guide which is now required to be used by teachers in the U.K. in conjunction with classroom viewings of the movie. In its introduction, the guide states:
"...in parts of the film, Gore presents evidence and arguments which do not accord with mainstream scientific opinion."
Included in that bogus evidence is the hocus-pocus Gore pulled with polar bears.
Polar bears are voracious meat-eaters that scarf down a whole seal every four days and are able to store hundreds of pounds of fat in their bodies. In addition, given their thick, waterproof fur, these magnificent creatures are able to withstand some of the coldest temperatures and numbing winds nature can produce. They are also capable of swimming up to 100 miles in open water. In short, polar bears are the ultimate survival animal.
Because he could not find a real polar bear succumbing to heat stroke in an iceless sea, Al Gore had to use an animated polar bear drowning in his movie. Finding the real deal is virtually impossible.
Truth is, polar bears are not perishing, but are prospering. Residents of Barrow, Alaska, the state's northern-most city, are always heavily armed with loaded shotguns when out and about, because of the population explosion. When in contact with a polar bear they are instructed to shoot to kill at close range, aiming for the head/neck so as to avoid wounding and infuriating these massive beasts.
An enlightening paragraph from a May, 2007 story in the Christian Science Monitor, dealing with the polar bear population boom stands out:
"There aren't just a few more bears. There are a...lot more bears," biologist Mitchell Taylor told the Nunatsiaq News of Iqaluit in the Arctic territory of Nunavut. Earlier, in a long telephone conversation, Dr. Taylor explained his conviction that threats to polar bears from global warming are exaggerated and that their numbers are increasing. He has studied the animals for the Nunavut government for two decades.
Part of the polar bear plethora has to do with the seal population. Seals throughout much of the Arctic are protected and hunting them is restricted. According the Canada Division of Fisheries and Oceans since the 1970s, in the eastern Arctic and northwest Atlantic, the harp seal population has boomed from 2 million to 5 million, creating a polar bear smorgasbord.
Another reason the polar bear population is thriving is because polar bears are not just survivors but adapters. They have been roaming the northern latitudes since before the last ice age, putting them in play for 130,000-250,000 years on the geological time-scale, a time in which the world was significantly warmer than it is today. So when my mother-in-law (the consummate contributor of odd facts for my radio show) handed me an "urgent" fundraising letter she received from the Environmental Defense Fund a couple years ago stating, "For polar bears-and indeed, for untold number of species-stopping global warming means the difference between life and death," we know that the global whiners don't want to hear the science, they just want to be perceived as correct.
In the same appeal letter, the EDF president drives home his point in bold print: "The Earth is round, Elvis is dead, and yes, climate change is happening. There is a sea of evidence pointing to the reality of global warming...."
When the global whiners go Elvis to make a point, you can rest assured they are incapable of winning an argument based on the facts.
As for the hosts of Al Gore's visit to Madison -- the Society of Environmental Journalists -- it should be noted that they cut off the microphone McAleer was using to grill Gore. This cowardly move was in keeping with the SEJ's quest to push their anthropogenic agenda. McAleer is what they term a "skeptic" who needs to be marginalized. In fact, in their global warming guide, the SEJ offers a list of "Skeptics and Contrarians", essentially providing a de-facto blacklisting service on who not to call.
According to the SEJ:
Some of the most vocal skeptics have done relatively little recent peer-reviewed scientific research on the topic, and some have had their voices amplified via financial support from industries opposed to any government regulation or taxation of greenhouse gas emissions...overall, their number represents a distinctly minority position in the ongoing and normal colloquy among scientists about the evidence of climate change and its likely impacts.
In turn, the SEJ provides a lengthy contact list of "trusted" scientists who would "be glad to talk to a journalist," the website offers.
Interestingly, engaging in a bit of investigative journalism of my own, I discovered that the SEJ has received considerable funding from radical groups well-known for their enthusiastic support to supposedly save the earth from man's CO2.
According to tax returns I have examined, the SEJ accepted largesse from the Rockefeller Family Fund, an organization whose "environment program emphasizes public education on the risk of global warming...and enforcement of the nation's environmental laws...." Also noteworthy is the money received from the Turner Foundation (as in Ted Turner, founder of CNN). The Turner Foundation has assisted a host of environmental groups over the years and is best known for its pledge of $1 billion to the United Nations.
In a wild appearance on PBS' Charlie Rose Show on April 1, 2008, Ted Turner predicted that because of global warming, "We'll be eight degrees hotter in 30 or 40 years, and basically none of the crops will grow...most of the people will have died and the rest of us will be cannibals." Turner's outrageous comments on Rose's program were not meant to be an April fool's joke. He continued to describe our climate-altered future: "Civilization will have broken down. The few people left will be living in a failed state-like Somalia or Sudan-and living conditions will be intolerable."
Turner's solution? Right from the Malthus playbook-stabilize the population. He told Rose, "We're too many people-that's why we have global warming." He continued, "Too many people are using too much stuff" and "on a voluntary basis, everybody in the world's got to pledge to themselves that one or two children is it."
The Society of Environmental Journalists and the propagandists they assist are nothing but the feeding trough for caldrons of slop, stirred by statist politicians and elitist social engineers.
Brian Sussman is an award-winning former television meteorologist and current radio host on KSFO, San Francisco. His forthcoming book, "Global Whining: confidence to confront the biggest scam in history," will be published by WND Books and available early next year.
