Showing posts with label Al Gore. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Al Gore. Show all posts

Monday, October 3, 2011

An Ill Windbag

Al Gore has found his carbon-trading schemes to be unpopular with the American people, so he's taking his Magical Mystery Climate Change Tour on the road. Last week, he was the keynoter for a Scottish clan of global warming enthusiasts. Scotland--the land of the bagpipe. The bagpipe, like Gore, is an ill wind that nobody blows good.

Having abandoned the simple phrase "global warming" in favor of "climate change," Gore is still making the same tired arguments about global warming/climate change being the result of human activity. The attacks on global warming theory were numerous and telling, but who can deny that the earth is going through, and has always gone through, climate change? The trick is to blame it on anthropogenic global warming so the green weenies can get rich at the expense of the poor suckers who actually believe that man is the source of climate change.

The speech was before the Scottish government-supported Low Carbon Investment Conference in Edinburgh. You see, just like the Obama administration, the Scottish government believes it has the right to select winners and losers in the energy game. Given the name of the conference, I think it's easy to infer just exactly who is out to profit from this climate change scam. Apparently in Scotland, as in the United States currently, "investment" means taxpayer money being diverted to friends of the government, regardless of either the riskiness or foolishness of the "investment."

Gore goes off once again about consensus among scientists that the "climate crisis" and "extreme weather events" are man-made. There is no such consensus. What consensus there is exists among junk scientists who would have no jobs and no funding if their scam were completely discredited. It is the job of fat-cat hysterics such as Al Gore to make sure that doesn't happen. Like the myth of the melting glaciers and drowning polar bears, Gore perpetuates non-scientific anecdotes as evidence of his latest "scientific discoveries." "Flooding in Pakistan, China and elsewhere" are proof that extreme weather is the result of climate change.

Yes, that's true enough, but how does it go to prove that global warming or climate change is caused by human activity? Yep, climate change is pretty likely the cause of extreme weather. And the oceans are wet, largely because they are full of water. Stating the obvious doesn't answer the question. And Gore pulls out all the stops to keep people from noticing that he still can't prove that man is the cause of global warming or climate change. He merely drags out "consensus" again. "Every single national academy of science of every major country on earth agrees with the consensus. The need for urgent action is now indisputable."

Every scientist I know of agrees that the earth is sort of round. Does that consensus mean that the earth is round because of human activity? The "consensus" that climate change/extreme weather is the result of human activity does not exist, but you're not supposed to notice that detail amidst the apocalyptic hysteria. The real hope of the Goreists is that by changing the words of the debate from global warming to climate change to extreme weather, thinking people will be too stupid to realize that the underlying thesis of anthropogenic climate change is not even close to being a consensus.

Outside of the green "investment" hacks and the junk scientists who depend on taxpayers and other suckers to keep their jobs, the majority of scientists have concluded that man may play some very small part in climate change (more so in the 19th century than in the 20th), but the major factors are the sun and internal changes within the earth's core. The climate changes on earth are reflected on Mars, where there are no SUVs or fossil-fueled energy plants that I know of.

Gore took a shot at ignorant Americans who have elected representatives unwilling to support Gore's personal plan to increase his wealth with hare-brained carbon trading schemes. He is a rich man who would become immensely richer if America would only buy into his schemes. Yet he attacks both capitalism and the American government in one sentence in which he decried: "the effect of lobbying and money-raising on the U.S. Congress, and on carbon producers who employ four Washington lobbyists for every member of Congress." There are no green weenie lobbyists, of course. Just ask the execs at Solyndra.

Gore went on to extol the job-creation wonders of green technology and carbon trading. I doubt he will make the same speech in Spain, where the government committed itself to energy schemes nearly identical to Gore's, and ended up losing nine jobs for every four jobs created. He also called the reluctance of Congress to enrich him and his cronies while raising energy costs and reducing energy efficiency an unwarranted attack. "In the language of computer culture, our democracy has been hacked." Well, I guess he ought to know since he invented the internet.

Gore and his Tour will be moving on to China in the near future. I guess he plans to challenge China's massive increases in both production and CO2-based air pollution by raising the specter of Scotland as taking the lead in energy production. To a standing ovation in Edinburgh, Gore announced that "Scotland will lead the world in wind power." Now, about those bagpipes.
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Tuesday, November 23, 2010

The Rise And Continuing Fall Of Al Gore

It’s been a bad year for environmentalists. The Earth cooled. Climategate exposed them. And now their Prophet Al Gore has admitted that his push for corn-based ethanol was nothing but pandering to Iowa farmers. In fact, Al Gore seems to keep imploding.

There is little doubt that Al Gore has become a prophet for the environmental movement. In fact, Penn and Teller did an interesting piece where they asked people to describe Al Gore, and to a liberal they all used religious terminology. He was Kool-Aid Obama before Obama.

But the right spotted Al Gore as a charlatan immediately. For one thing, he was known for telling whoppers, like how he invented the internet. But he also showed that he had no qualms with changing his positions to whatever profited him personally. For example, back when he was a mere Senator from Tennessee, sitting in the Senate seat he inherited from his father, Al Gore used to talk about being a tobacco farmer. In fact, he would go around describing how he lovingly planted tobacco plants. This made him sound like a real man of the Earth, which played well in Tennessee. But then he learned that there was more political cache to be earned by being anti-tobacco. So he became the world’s biggest opponent of cigarette companies. . . a position he suddenly claimed to always hold.

At the end of the 1980s, Al Gore adopted environmentalism when he wrote "Earth In The Balance." This was in stark contrast to his ownership interest in Occidental Petroleum or when his family entered the zinc mining business. But he saw environmentalism as his future ticket. So when the opportunity came up, in 1994, he cast the tie vote in the Senate to authorize a subsidized ethanol program in the U.S. This program would eventually spend about $7.7 billion a year to subsidize the production of corn-based ethanol in the U.S.

From the start, everyone knew this program was a bad idea. The environmental value of corn-based ethanol was dubious because the amount of energy required to make this ethanol was only slightly less (or possibly even more) than using oil. A much better alternative was Brazilian sugar-based ethanol, but that would not help US farmers. But since Al Gore wanted to be known as the environmentalist, he wasn't going to let this opportunity pass him by, and he attacked the program's critics as oil-industry stooges. The environmentalists fell in love.

Then Al Gore set about becoming a full-on environmental profit... er, prophet. No, actually, profit is right. For while Al Gore jetted all over the Earth lecturing people about saving the environment, it was soon discovered that he owned a home with the carbon footprint of a small city. And when Al Gore started pushing the idea that people could offset their carbon footprints by buying indulgences, it was discovered that he owned the company that was selling them. Even the offsets he claimed to have purchased himself, were bought from. . . himself. Then Al Gore and Goldman Sachs got into the carbon permit game, trying to buy up carbon permits and using our government to force through a cap and trade scheme that would make these valuable. With the election of the Republicans these things lost more than 90% of their value.

Then a Canadian mathematician (Steven McIntyre) proved that the science behind Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth (specifically his famous hockey stick graph) was fraudulent, and it would produce a hockey stick no matter what data you entered. This was followed by a British judge ruling that Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth contained enough errors that it could not be used as a learning tool in schools. Then the Earth entered a cooling trend that should never have happened according to Al Gore's teachings. This was followed by Climategate, which showed that the whole global warming industry was based on faked data.

Things were not looking good for Al Gore. (Not to mention he was suddenly facing personal problems, like the investigation into possible sex crimes and his surprise divorce.)

And now, Al Gore has admitted that the corn-based ethanol policy that got him started wasn’t a good idea. It has little environmental merit and it created a $7.7 billion a year subsidy that just won’t go away to make room for better environmental programs. . . just as the critics warned. That’s bad. Not to mention that, by diverting all this corn to ethanol, the price of food has been skyrocketing the world over.

But it gets worse because Al also admitted that the only reason he supported this program (which he knew was not a good idea) was that he wanted the votes of farmers in Iowa for his presidential run. In other words, he pushed a policy he knew was bad, while telling us it had benefits it didn’t and unfairly attacking the program's critics, because he knew it would get him votes. Some prophet!

Well, don't worry about poor Al Gore. He's not out of schemes just yet. In fact, he has a new plan for saving the planet that we should all trust: Al wants us to subsidize "second generation ethanol." What do you think are the odds that he already owns stock?

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Saturday, November 20, 2010

Al Gore--Meet Bjorn Lomborg

Al Gore, author of I'm Unbalanced, won a Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 largely based on his boffo film An Inconvenient Truth. For outright lies, distortions, false facts, jury-rigged evidence, and junk science, it is outdone by Mein Kamp and The Communist Manifesto. But Hitler and Marx neglected to convert their nonsense into box office gold.

Reichsfuehrer of Propaganda Gore wants to gain control of the spoils of the government cap 'n tax scheme which will impoverish America (except for Herr Gore and his fellow schemers). His movie was the best piece of government propaganda since Triumph of the Will. All emotion, triumphalism, mass hysteria, and rah-rah we're the best, with almost zero substance. There's a sucker born every minute, and every damned one of them must have shown up for Gore's movie--including the Nobel Committee.

But just as Triumph of the Will ignored the achievements of Jesse Owens, so An Inconvenient Truth [sic.] ignores another champion. That champion is Bjorn Lomborg. And unlike Owens, Lomborg has produced his own film to counter Gore's junk science movie. It's called Cool It.

Lomborg is not exactly a household word--yet. But his credentials as a reformed global warming enthusiast make him a force to be reckoned with. He knows the enemy camp because he used to be part of it. He knows his science, and he knows how to present it on film. This former Greenpeace activist does something very smart at the beginning of his movie. Before he proceeds to rip Gore's entire thesis apart (including pointing out that the earth has been cooling recently, so the mantra has changed to "climate change"), he introduces the audience to his biggest critics. They first began to attack him after his epiphany and publishing of 2001's The Skeptical Environmentalist. So Lomborg shows a clip of Stanford University Professor of Environmental Studies, Stephen Schneider, solemnly and ominously telling the camera crew that they're "not helping the world " by publicizing Lomborg's dissent.

Lomborg began his journey of learning about global warming the same way I began my journey about gun control. We were both incensed by an author who doubted the wisdom of the prevailing "consensus." Lomborg was sure the global warming scientists were right just as I was convinced that gun control enthusiasts were right. In Lomborg's case it was man-made global warming doubter Julian Simon in his book The State of Humanity. In order to attack Simon, Lomborg brought together a brain-trust of university scientists and students to prove Simon wrong. And much to his surprise, Lomborg found that the deeper and more carefully he delved, the more he found Simon to be correct. His Skeptical Environmentalist was the result.

Lomborg also states early on in the movie that he, like most scientists who don't have professional agendas that require them to think the way their sponsors tell them to think, is not a global warming denier. He simply says that the facts are not entirely clear on whether the earth will continue on a warming course, and more importantly that the real evidence shows that man's contribution to global warming (or "climate change") is statistically insignificant when compared with natural forces over which man has no control--and likely never will.

After establishing his credentials and his theory, he then goes on to the real business at hand--systematically tearing apart all the major assumptions in Gore's movie. He does so from his perspective as the director of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, a think tank that devotes its efforts to finding the most cost-effective ways of using government money and assets for fighting global human misery. Needless to say, Lomborg concludes that Cap'n Trade is the worst possible way of doing it. Using that mode of presentation, Lomborg is able to establish that he is not some heartless bureaucrat who ignores poverty, disease, and natural disasters in the name of profit.

He also establishes that he is an environmentalist of the classic sort. Preserve and protect that which clearly needs to be preserved and protected, and use the rest in the most humane and sensible way so as to serve the earth and its people. It is much like the Biblical admonition to be good stewards of the earth. That includes not worshiping the earth as a god (or goddess) and building a religion around it.

He commits the heresy of contradicting "settled science" by proclaiming that the world of human-caused pollution and destruction has actually improved considerably over the past few decades (ask anyone who has lived in Los Angeles long enough to remember how the acidic yellow skies were frequently so noxious as to make it nearly impossible to breathe). He also points out that recent major loss and harm to human life is more the result of lack of preparedness and increased population in dangerous places than it is to human activity. He cites Katrina and Haiti as examples.

As for Katrina, there have been far worse hurricanes, but they didn't cause the huge loss of life and property because people were better prepared to fend for themselves, and human populations hadn't crowded together in large numbers in the middle of a low-lying area know to be in the path of hurricanes and sea surges. So Lomborg doesn't attack environmentalism--just shoddy unscientific environmentalism. Based on his studies in Kenya and Great Britain in which he asked "what would you spend funds on?" he finds that environmentalism of the current hysterical sort is the privilege of wealthy high-tech nations. The Kenyans replied "medical care." The Brits replied "global warming."

Much to my delight, Lomborg also debunks all the myths about Al Gore's favorite mascot--the polar bear. He lays out the statistics that show that polar bear populations have increased dramatically in the past two decades, even if certain isolated areas have seen a decrease. The evidence shows that if the Kyoto Accords had been implemented worldwide, it might have saved one polar bear per year. Lomborg says that if governments really want to have an effect on polar bear populations, they should ban polar bear hunting, and enforce the ban rigidly. Of course my thought was that if they do that, where am I supposed to get that new rug to go in front of my fireplace?

Lomborg concludes that crippling the economies of industrial nations by destroying the current energy infrastructure is a fool's errand. As a cost-benefit analyst, he logically concludes that if you're going to spend government money on improving the environment, spend the money on research and development on renewable energy and let the market take care of the result. He sensibly posits that if "green energy" eventually becomes scientifically superior and more cost-effective than coal and petroleum, people will make that choice without being driven first into bankruptcy by omniscient government bureaucracies.

My only personal objection to the movie is that it doesn't caricature Al Gore more successfully. A few shots of him pocketing millions of dollars earned from scamming the public would have been desirable. Gore is the ultimate hypocrite, decrying profits while making millions (probably even billions) on a dangerously foolish carbon emissions scheme. Gore tells everyone else how they should live in caves with candles instead of electrical appliances while he himself lives in a house bigger than Rhode Island using electricity at the rate of a small European nation.

On the other hand, I'm more than a little envious of Lomborg. The man is an excellent scholar, a fine scientist, and has many accomplishments under his belt. So when he showed up to tout his movie on TV last week, I was sure they had sent in a ringer and gotten his age wrong. Lomborg was wearing a black tee-shirt and looked like a twenty-five year old athlete or model. Is he really 45 years old? Apparently so.
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Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Bless The Beasts And The EPA

That adorable little critter eating the foliage in your garden is the banana slug. It's one of many creepy-crawlies living in abundance being protected by the Environmental Protection Agency. It eats, it breeds, yet serves no other known purpose. But it's cute, so let's call it "endangered."

That way nobody will consider doing something useful with the land it eats and breeds on in great numbers from Southern Alaska to San Diego. fact, it's so cute that the University of California at Santa Cruz chose it as the school mascot. In case you're not familiar with recent activities at UC Santa Cruz, Jews are a far more endangered species there than are banana slugs. But I digress. Alas and alack, the EPA seems to have located, identified and protected just about every ecologically useless or destructive animal in America. So unless they can find an even more obscure and useless fish than the Delta smelt (whose miserable existence is about to cause the extinction of another species, the California farmer), they have to move on to other things. And move on is exactly what the EPA is doing.

With the assistance of the greenie-weenie Obama administration, and the guidance of the Great Goracle and his billion dollar carbon offset scam, the EPA is poised to usurp the prerogatives of the elected branches of government and regulate greenhouse gases. The EPA has particularly decided that Carbon Dioxide is a deadly poisonous gas, which is solely produced by the human activities of greedy capitalists, and is causing global warming which is melting all the ice in the world (except the ice in the potent cocktails at D.C. parties).

In an attempt to fend off the EPA's egregious power-grab that is based on rapidly disintegrating junk science and doctored reports, eighteen state governors (as well as two American territorial governors) have had the effrontery to write a joint formal letter demanding that Congress rein in the EPA zealots. How dare these mere elected state officials think they might know a little more about their states' needs than a bunch of bureaucrats, crackpot politicos (Van Jones, anyone?), socialist self-aggrandizers, and for-profit pseudo-scientists in D.C.?

"As governors, we have the responsibility to protect jobs, promote economic growth and mitigate any threats to financial stability in our states. We oppose EPA regulation of greenhouse gases that fail to account for these responsibilities." How petty can they be? Imagine--weighing the very economic survival of their people against the airy-fairy pet theories of global warming/climate change enthusiasts. When will these backward-thinking self-centered stooges of capitalism realize they must sacrifice their old-fashioned ideas for the public good?

The governors weren't even particularly combative in the letter. They certainly didn't demand that all attempts to rid the air of pollutants cease immediately. They simply said: "The Agency is not equipped to consider the very real potential for economic harm when regulating emissions. Without that consideration, regulation will place heavy administrative burdens on state environmental quality agencies, will be costly to consumers and could be devastating to the economy and jobs." They want to know why Congress is so willing to surrender its oversight authority on behalf of job-killing schemes which are unproven and scientifically questionable and demonstrably quarrelsome (see EPA solar-power enthusiasts vs. EPA "save the lizards" enthusiasts in the California/Nevada deserts). Of course they wrote the letter to a Congress that actually took Cap and Trade seriously.

No taxation without representation was a rallying cry for the Revolutionary patriots. Perhaps today a good substitute is what the governors are saying--no regulation without representation. The governors are suggesting that such a massive delegation of power should never occur, but if it were to be done in a constitutional manner (if such a thing is even possible), then this is precisely the wrong time to be doing it.

One of the implications of the letter is that the governors represent their citizens, and that this is the same thing expected of the members of Congress. The hint is that any elected representative who ignores his or her constituents may not be long for this political world, given the economic crisis the entire nation is experiencing. Creating a few thousand "green jobs" that cost billions of dollars and take jobs away from far more workers than the plan creates is clearly not a viable alternative to being extremely cautious about implementing EPA restrictions that grossly restrict growth and seriously hamper major business and industrial activities.

The letter was signed by two Democratic governors (Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Steve Beshear of Kentucky), so it was not entirely partisan. I did not fail to notice that the signature of the governor of California was conspicuously absent from the letter. Our RINO governor is presiding over the worst economic calamity in California since the Great Depression, and the greatest mass exodus of businesses and taxpayers in its entire history. So naturally he supports the EPA's plans to make the air entirely pollutant free this very moment, and damn the effect on the jobs and economy of the state that is leading the rest of the nation off the tax-and-spend cliff.

Final question. Does anybody know how much greenhouse gas a few million munching, foliage-eating, slimy breeding banana slugs produce in a year? I don't.
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Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Are Republicans Finding Their Manhood?

It would seem so. And at least one of the early moves toward taking the momentum away from the expansionist federal monstrosity is being led by a woman. Lisa Murkowski, Republican Senator from Alaska, has introduced a resolution of disapproval to overturn the Environmental Protection Agency's determination that greenhouse gas emissions, particularly carbon dioxide, endanger public health and welfare.

This would be a major step toward slapping down the bureaucratic circumvention of the independent powers of Congress and the executive branch. The Messiah, tutored by the Goracle, decided it was time to stop any moves which would endanger their march toward economic meltdown by empowering the EPA to do by indirection that which the law had previously denied them directly. By declaring carbon-dioxide to be a dangerous emission, the federal bureaucracy would be able to force restrictions on industry and production without having to go to Congress for authorization. In other words, it's the fast-track to cap and trade legislation. Congress would be forced to find a scheme to finance a reduction of greenhouse gases that Obama and Gore both believe are the cause of global warming, or climate-change, or whatever they're calling it this week. That whole theory is blowing up in their faces, and any impediment to enforcement of carbon trade-off legislation endangers their underlying plan--to gain government control of every facet of our lives and to tax American businesses into oblivion.

In proposing this resolution of disapproval under the Congressional Review Act, Murkowski is taking an angry shot across the statist bow. And she understands "strike while the iron is hot." In the wake of the Massachusetts victory and the revolt of the Tea Party movement, even blue dog Democrats, already feeling shaky, are positively trembling about their futures. As a result, Murkoswki's resolution is co-sponsored by Democrats Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Ben "Cornhusker Kickback" Nelson, and Mary "Lousiana Purchase" Landrieu. And Murkowski knows that if she can bring along her party and seven additional Democrats on a resolution, she's home free because under Senate rules, a CRA resolution of disapproval only requires a majority vote and cannot be filibustered.

Murkowski faces formidable opposition, led by my junior Senator, Her Majesty Doctor Professor Queen-of-the-Hill Don't Call Me Ma'am Senator Barbara Boxer. Says Babs: "Imagine if in the 1980s the Senate had overturned the health finding that nicotine in cigarettes causes lung cancer. How many more people would have died already? Imagine if a senator got the votes to come to the floor to overturn the finding that lead in paint damages children's brain development? How many children and families would have suffered? Imagine if the senator had come down to the floor and said, you know, I don't think black lung disease is in any way connected to coal dust. Imagine!"

Well, Ma'am, would you listen to a Senator who said that all your examples are "settled science" which can't even come close to being said about your crazed ideas about carbon dioxide and global warming? How would you feel if a Senator came down to the floor and said "we believe that chocolate is killing children at a horrendous pace, so we want production taxed, limited and ultimately eliminated, and if you'll just give us another fifty to seventy-five years, we'll have bought enough junk scientists to prove it?" (Theoretically, the latter Senator would also produce a hockey-stick graph to demonstrate how the increased use of chocolate in the last decade has caused a huge spike in the death rate of chocolate-eating children).

It's all "for the children" isn't it, Ma'am? So anything goes. Well, maybe not. More germane, Murkowski joins many of us in wanting legislation which cleans up the air that we, and our children, breathe. Even we troglodyte conservatives see the good in preventing further despoliation of our air, land and waters. Murkowski merely sees the underlying statist scheme and the immense damage it would produce, and says that what the Democrats are proposing won't work, is based on highly-disputed science, would be costly beyond imagination, produce wealth for carbon-traders like Al Gore while crippling major American business and industries for no good reason, and set a precedent for bureaucratic decision-makers to reach conclusions in which they have a vested interest.

With the approval of the Obama administration, and the past docility of the Congress, the EPA is working toward making itself the sole power controlling a major portion of the economy. By declaring carbon dioxide a dangerous emission, the EPA can control heavy industry, energy producers, the automobile industry, the construction industry, and myriad small businesses. And it does all that without public agreement or the necessity of Congressional votes.

Before passage of the Clean Air Act, Congress had reserved to itself the power to determine what is, and what is not, a poisonous emission. If EPA was allowed to regulate anything, it had to get that power from Congress first. The new power to make that determination came from Congress's failure to put that reservation into the Clean Air Act, and a terrible decision from the U. S. Supreme Court in Massachusetts v EPA which held that without specific language regarding regulation of the list of dangerous emissions authorized by Congress, EPA's power to do so was inferred from the text of the Act.

Boxer's argument is that if we waited for Congress to make the determination, it could take years. Yes, Ma'am, it might. It's called democracy, and it's messy and time-consuming. But prior to the new-think from the Progressive era, we did not tolerate government by bureaucracy. Speed and efficiency are no substitute for public debate, Congressional action, and the will of the people. The Clean Air Act is simply another example of Congress unconstitutionally delegating its power to legislate to a regulation-crazy bureaucracy. Murkowski proposed to halt that ongoing process. The correction is actually quite easy. Amend the Act so that Congress takes back its rightful power of determining what the EPA can and cannot do in the area of "greenhouse gases." Murkowski's resolution is a first step in accomplishing that. Nevertheless, Her Majesty the High and Mighty Senator Boxer calls the action "unprecedented." I wonder where she got that word?
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Saturday, November 28, 2009

Film Friday: The Day The Earth Stood Still (2008)

This film is the greatest film of all time. You must see this film. Indeed, they should force school children to watch it. Forget the original, the new The Day The Earth Stood Still, staring Al Gore and Hillary Clinton, imparts just the kinds of values we need in this horrible, capitalist world.

** spoiler alert **

The Day The Earth Stood Still begins when the fascist pigs grab Demi Moore... er, Jennifer Connelly. Connelly plays a scientist, but the good kind. She doesn’t make weapons or work for the military industrial complex or for evil corporations, she works at a nice northeastern university. And her students love her! Oh she’s wonderful. She’s a liberal who speaks her mind. She speaks truth to power, she drives a Prius (actually it’s a Honda but it looks like a Prius), and she’s raising a little African-American child (his father died in one of George Bush’s wars).

What? Oh no no, he wasn’t that kind of soldier, Dr. Jennifer never would have married that kind of soldier. He was an engineer. He went “over there to build” stuff. And while they don’t specifically tell us what he was building, I’m sure it was schools, not roads or power plants or oil refiners or other environmentally unfriendly structures.

Anyway, the kid. . . I don’t recall his name, but it doesn’t matter. He’s so gosh darn cute! He’s like a young Obama! The moment I saw him, I said, man I hope he saves us all. But, as I said, before we get to little Obama, the film begins with the fascists. After the fascists grab Dr. Jennifer, we learn that a spaceship is headed straight for New York City. In addition to Dr. Jennifer, the fascists have grabbed a rainbow coalition of scientists. I think the fascists are trying to kill this rainbow coalition because they're taking them to New York City and we're told the spacecraft is moving so fast it will wipe out New York City. So when the evil military claims it wants these scientists to “observe” the million megaton-explosion from the air. . . a few hundred feet above the city, I can only assume this is a complex attempt to kill these scientist. Isn't that just like the military?

Anyway, the ship turns out to be a huge glowing marble. From the marble comes a creature. And just as Dr. Jennifer walks up to it to speak to it, an evil soldier shoots the creature. Long story short, it turns out to be Al Gore. OMG he plays this role perfectly -- he wanders around like a wooden robot saying amazing things so prophetic I honestly had a hard time understanding them. I felt I learned so much watching him in this film. Al Gore wants to speak to our leaders at the United Nations, but Hillary Clinton won’t let him. She's the Secretary of Defense and she's rotten. She's no Dick Cheney, but she's no Obama either.

Dr. Jennifer helps Al Gore escape and they ride around the country in her Prius. Al Gore meets some old Chinese dude who turns out to be one of Al Gore’s people. He says we’re an evil race and we can’t change, so while he loves us, we need to be exterminated. Al Gore agrees. Al Gore then goes to a swamp in New Jersey where he finds a glowing bubble that isn’t radioactive waste. When he touches it, some of the animals on the planet get transported into space. Al Gore then explains that the world has reached a tipping point and evil humans are on the verge of permanently destroying the planet. So he’s come to wipe us out to protect the Earth, because it’s one of the few planets in the universe that can sustain life.

Meanwhile, there’s this evil general or colonel. I’m not sure which. He’s got a moustache which reminds me of the old West, or that guy from the Village People, and I think he keeps yelling “yee haw!” and “kill it” but that could be my imagination. He tries several times to blow up Al Gore’s marble in New York because that's exactly what the military would do -- try to destroy an alien race for no reason whatsoever! I hate them so much.

In the process of trying to destroy a robot that came with Al Gore, the military unleashes a killer storm of metallic insects from inside the robot that eat everything. Al Gore explains to Dr. Jennifer (after a quick visit with Dr. John Cleese), that there is nothing he can do. And then the miracle happens. The fascists capture Dr. Jennifer, leaving Al Gore with little Obama. Little Obama explains that while he originally wanted to kill Al Gore when he first saw him, because he thought Al Gore was a danger, he no longer wants to kill Al Gore now that he realizes that Al Gore means us no harm and has no choice but to kill us.

Weeeeeellll, this little admission was all it took for Al Gore to see the error of his ways. He now decides not to destroy the human race. At first, I felt let down by this. But then Al Gore promised there would be a price! Long story short, Al Gore stops the insects and saves us all. But to do so, he wipes out all of mankind’s evil mechanical creations. No more cars, no more machines, no loud ambulances or fire trucks, no more trains or ships delivering "goods" and "food" to evil consumers. I don’t know what happened to the airplanes, but I guess they all landed ok.

In the end, you can’t help but feel hopeful for the future! This was an environmentalist dream come true, a super race come to save the planet from us and show us a better way! Dare I say, it almost felt enviro-pornographic! Oh, it was beautiful.

Wait a minute. . .

While it is true there would be no Starbucks anymore, there also wouldn’t be any food staples. Hmm. Mass starvation is no big deal, I guess. After all, they’re only humans. But those hungry humans are going to eat every animal they can find. And without all of the machinery to help them, they’re going to need a lot more farmland to survive. Shoot. That means they’re going to cut down the forests. . . at least those that are left after they cut down all the trees for firewood. Wow, that’s a lot of carbon that’s going to be released. I’ll bet they won’t even worry about the delta smelt! And what about nationalized health care? There really won’t be any health care. Even things like antibiotics will only be available to the lucky few who know the right kind of doctor that they can barter with.

That sucks.

You know what? Now that I think about it, this film sucked too. Wooden acting (if you can call it acting), a pathetic plot that made little sense, constant blasting of the same liberal bullsh*t message, indifferent sets, effects and costuming, contradictions galore, and it will bore you to tears.

Up yours Al Gore.

Check out the new film site -- CommentaramaFilms!

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Saturday, July 11, 2009

Warning: The End Is Near -- July 8, 2017!!

Put a fork in us, dear reader, we’re done. Apparently, capitalism and consumerism have brought the world to the brink of economic and environmental collapse. In 96 months, on July 8, 2017, we all die. . . except for the red squirrel, which won’t die until April 2019.

So who made this dire prediction? Nostradamus? Edgar Kasey? The Mayan desk planner? Red-squirrel enthusiasts? No. It was England’s own dapper Prince of Wales.

That’s right, visionary Prince Charles, heir to the throne. . . the man Al Gore calls “a thought leader”. . . the man who receives £3 million each year from British taxpayers just to hang around in case his mom dies. . . the man who demonstrated his scientific acumen in 2004 by claiming that daily coffee enemas cure cancer -- a claim described thusly by one eminent cancer specialist: “I’m going to be very angry. Charles is abusing his position to put around wacky ideas which have no scientific credence.”

Bottom's up my Lord!

But, as the red squirrels might say, nuts to science. Who needs science when you have vision. . .

Three days ago, the prognosticating Prince told a group of industrialists that the “age of convenience” was over, and that he personally “calculated” that we have just 96 months left to save the world from the “irreversible damage of climate change”:

“for all its achievements, our consumerist society comes at an enormous cost to the Earth and we must face up to the fact that the Earth cannot afford to support it. . . Nature’s life-support systems are failing to cope with the debts we have built up. . . If we don’t face up to this, then Nature, the biggest bank of all, could go bust. And no amount of quantitative easing will revive it.”
He then engaged in a little numerology, pulling fake figures from the Royal Rectum, to amuse his audience.

Naturally, Commentarama takes such threats seriously. So let us see if we can’t find someone to blame for this problem.

A study by the British government-funded Carbon Trust, estimates that the average binge-drinking Briton produces a carbon footprint of 10.92 tons of CO2 per year. The same group claims the average American produces 21 tons of CO2 per year.

But before you accuse the Americans of letting down humanity, one must realize that the American’s don’t have the same quality role-models that the British do. We, in the states, only have Al Gore to inspire us, while you British have genuine royalty to inspire you. Indeed, unlike Al Gore, a noted polluter, jaunty Prince Charles’s carbon footprint is a measly. . . uh oh.

Apparently, in June 30, 2008, the jolly green Prince admitted that his carbon footprint was 2,795 tons for the prior year. Yes, 2,795 tons!! That’s more than 133 times the average American! But wait, there’s more. That figure does not include the CO2 produced by his farms. That’s another 2,459 tons, increasing his total to 5,254 tons. . . the equivalent of 250 Americans! But wait, there’s even more. This figure doesn’t include ANY of the carbon footprint caused by his official travel or business travel.

We can only guess at how much that is. But here are some interesting hints:

To make his pronouncement of environmental doom, the flighty Prince took a 14-person entourage on a 16,000 mile trip, releasing 322 tons of CO2 into the atmosphere.

In April 2009, the Carbon Prince chartered a series of private flights throughout Europe to promote environmental awareness, at a carbon cost of 53 tons, thirteen times the carbon that would have been released by flying commercial.
But perhaps this is not fair, for he does so love to fly. Indeed, in June 2007, the air to the throne took a staff of twenty on an 11,000 kilometer plane ride just to collect a Global Environmental Citizen prize.

Cheeky sire, cheeky, especially, as this same lecturous Prince once noticed that “a product [like coffee] flown halfway across the world leaves far more carbon emissions in its wake than a similar one made just down the road.” Yes, as do princes, Your High-ness.

So is it really capitalism that has killed the planet or is it effete rich, coffee-enemaist who travel around lecturing the rest of us?

It seems, that if there is such a thing as a crime against the environment, then you, Prince Chuck, are the worst offender. You should be tried, convicted, and then banished to live in a cave. . . without attendants, and nary a medicinal coffee bean. Or you could do the honorable, environmentally friendly thing and compost yourself post haste.

And until such time as this perilous Prince abandons his evil ways or the World stops him, we at Commentarama will do our part to reduce CO2 emissions by simply not being Prince Charles.

Finally, let us add, that is it a good thing that this CO2 fantasy is nothing more than bad science, coffee-enema bad, or we might be truly angry at this hypocritical git. As it is, we are simply not amused.


Red squirrel at night, Prince's delight,
Capitalist squirrel in the morn, Prince's scorn.

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