Ignoring the fact that the rising death toll is due in part to an
incompetent, isolationist and authoritarian government that allows most
of its people to live in shanty towns of tin and bamboo, Gore claimed
that "we're seeing consequences that scientists have long predicted
might be associated with continued global warming."
There's a "trend toward more Category 5 storms," Gore claimed, and
this trend "appears to be linked to global warming and specifically to
the impact of global warming on higher ocean temperatures in the top
couple of hundred feet in the ocean, which drives convection energy and
moisture into these storms and makes them more powerful."
Except, as we recently noted, the trend in the world's oceans — as
shown by measurements taken by a fleet of 3,000 high-tech ocean buoys
first deployed in 2003 — is toward cooling. As Dr. Josh Willis, of
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, noted in a separate interview with
National Public Radio, "there has been a very slight cooling" over the
buoys' five years of observation.
As Joseph D'Aleo, the Weather Channel's first director of
meteorology, told National Review Online's Deroy Murdock that the
slight warming trend "peaked in 1998, and the temperature trend the
last decade has been flat, even as CO2 has increased 5.5%. Cooling
began in 2002." He added: "Ocean buoys have echoed that slight cooling
since the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration deployed them
in 2003."
In fact, Ryan Maue of Florida State University's Center for
Ocean-Atmosphere Prediction Studies says 2007 "will rank as a
historically inactive tropical cyclone year for the Northern Hemisphere
as a whole."
In the past 30 years, Maue adds, only 1977 had less hurricane
activity from January through October. Last September had the lowest
activity since 1977 while the Octobers of 2006 and 2007 had the lowest
activity since 1976 and 1977, respectively.
So why the hype? Well, global warming is a growth industry designed to keep Earth and some bank accounts green.
Gore himself joined the venture capital group, Kleiner Perkins
Caufield & Byers just last September. On May 1, the firm announced
a $500 million investment in maturing green technology firms called the
Green Growth Fund.
The group announced another $700 million to be invested over the
next three years in green-tech startup firms. But if the green
technology business, uh, cools down, there will be no return on that
investment. There would be no need for such investments if global
warming wasn't a threat. So Gore just launched, among other things, a
$300 million on an ad campaign to convince us it is so.
Speaking at a conference in Monterey, Calif., on March 1, the former
vice president admitted to having "a stake" in a number of green
investments into which he recommended attendees put money rather than
"subprime carbon assets" such as tar sands and shale oil. He also is
co-founder and chairman of Generation Investment Management, which
sells carbon offsets that allow rich polluters to continue polluting
with a clear conscience.
We have a prediction all our own — that disastrous global warming
will not occur. Then the greenies will take credit for preventing it
and ask us if we're glad we spent trillions in fighting it. Al Gore
will be laughing all the way to the bank. Source