Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 07/29/2008 6:32:03 AM PDT by shortstop
Is Al Gore nuts?
I’m serious. Is it possible that the disappointment of losing the presidential campaign eight years ago destabilized him?
If you think about it, since then, he’s been a changed man.
First he got fat. He went through a dramatic physical change. He put on a significant amount of weight and grew a beard and got reclusive.
Then he lost the weight and found a cause.
Manmade global warming.
It absolutely became his theme in life. After being largely silent on the issue during eight years as the vice president and a good run in the Senate, he discovered that the most important issue in the world is manmade global warming. He is a single-minded zealot.
And it’s paid off for him.
He got an Oscar. He got a Nobel.
Granted, he won those awards not as the result of anything truly significant he did, but merely because the presenting bodies wanted to give the finger to George W. Bush.
Unfortunately, the awards seem to have fueled Al Gore’s outlandish ideas about manmade global warming.
Before I go further, let me say that I used to admire Al Gore. He has a long history as a decent guy. He served in the Army as an enlistedman, he went to Vietnam, he married a nice girl, he did well by his family, and he kept his feet on the ground. During the Clinton Administration, he and Tipper were the normal ones we could relate to.
But the presidential loss hit him hard.
From his perspective, he won and had it stolen from him. Knowing that more people voted for you, but you lost anyway, has to be haunting.
And I wonder if it hurt his mind.
Because he has become preposterous. His rantings on manmade global warming – even if you believe in it – have become illogical and nonsensical.
I’m not making fun of him. I’m trying to understand him. And, from the standpoint of reality, I can’t.
Like his recent demand that the United States stop making electricity from fossil fuels in 10 years.
Though the call was immediately echoed by Barack Obama – the me-too candidate – it is so outside the realm of possibility, and would be so dramatically destructive to American society, that no person of sound mind could mean it.
He said that by 2018, we should shut down all coal and natural gas electricity plants. He said they should be replaced by renewable energy plants.
He specifically included solar, wind and geothermal, and specifically excluded nuclear and hydroelectric.
The irony there is that nuclear and hydroelectric actually work and solar, wind and geothermal actually don’t. Not that they might not someday, and not that we shouldn’t keep trying to work out the bugs, but from a truly practical standpoint, solar, wind and geothermal are dreams, not realities.
That’s impossibility Number One.
Impossibility Number Two is the notion that any sort of changeover could occur within 10 years. Al Gore – friend of the environmentalist left – knows that between regulations and reviews and the certain lawsuits of obstructionist activists, there is little chance that a single power project could be approved and constructed in a decade, much less the hundreds or thousands that would be necessary to provide the electricity American needs.
Further, if massive solar and wind projects were put up, with great advances in technology, the distribution infrastructure for such power sources is simply not in place. Anybody who does any reading at all on alternative energy knows that.
What he has called for is impossible.
Under no circumstance is it attainable in 10 years.
And if it were even minimally enforced – if the government shut down some coal and natural gas power plants – the impact on the American economy and lifestyle would be massive and catastrophic.
One need look no further than the impact of the rising cost of gasoline to see why.
America has almost no reserve electrical capacity, as evidenced by the occasional California brownout. If coal and natural gas plants were taxed more or regulated more or forced out of service, and the supply of electricity were to fall – at a time when every expectation is that demand will rise – what would happen to the price of electricity?
Its price would jump, just as the price of gasoline has jumped.
And budgets and lifestyles would be smashed.
Again, the point is not that renewable energies shouldn’t be explored. We should study them all and use everything that works. Solar, wind and geothermal would be great, if we can make them economical and doable, and nuclear and hydro are already proven blockbuster sources.
If we can replace coal and natural gas in our power plants in time, great. We can use the coal better in industry and the natural gas could be an excellent motor-vehicle fuel.
But a 10-year mandate would pull the plug on America.
Homes and businesses live on electricity. It is as important as motor-vehicle fuel. And all of a sudden, families would have to turn off lights and air-conditioners and televisions and refrigerators. In the era of the iPod and the laptop, a shortage of electricity would make $5 gas seem like a minor inconvenience.
And that is the unavoidable consequence of what Al Gore called for.
There is no way that abandoning fossil fuel as a means of fueling power plants would do anything but crash our economy and our country.
And anyone who doesn’t realize that isn’t playing with a full deck.
So I ask again: Is Al Gore nuts?
yes.
he too has a messiah complex.
I came to the conclusion long ago that the answer is YES.
Yes. Why would this even be a question?
ask Jesse
This is a rhetorical question, right?
Great Poll Question: Yes
“Is Al Gore nuts?”
Need you ask?
:)
He has been nuts since he entered the world.
No. He’s earned millions peddling global warming snake oil.
He’s an opportunist. He’s in it for the money.
Why would anybody think that?
Neither Gore nor Obama practice what they preach.
Yes, of course.
Does a Hobby Horse have a wooden d***?
Its like a box of chocolates you never know when you'll find a nut- AL Gump..
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