Posted on 04/18/2006 6:28:32 AM PDT by finnman69
Boring Al Gore has made a movie. It is on the most boring of all subjects - global warming. It is more than 80 minutes long and the first two or three go by slowly enough so that you can notice that Gore has gained weight and that his speech still seems out of sync. But a moment later, you will be captivated, then riveted and then scared out of your wits. Our Earth is going to hell in a handbasket.
You will see the Arctic and Antarctic icecaps melting. You will see Greenland oozing into the sea. You will see the atmosphere polluted with greenhouse gases that block heat from escaping. You will see .photos from space of what the icecaps looked like once and what they look like now, and, in animation, you will see how high the oceans might rise. Shanghai and Calcutta swamped. Much of Florida, too. The water takes a hunk of New York. The fuss about what to do with Ground Zero will turn to naught. It will be under water.
"An Inconvenient Truth" is a cinematic version of the lecture that Gore has given for years warning of the dangers of global warming. The case Gore makes is worthy of sleepless nights: Our Earth is in extremis. It's not just that polar bears are drowning because they cannot reach receding ice floes or that "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" will exist someday only as a Hemingway short story. It's rather that Hurricane Katrina is not past, but prologue. Katrina produced several hundred thousand evacuees. The flooding of Calcutta would produce many millions.
You cannot see this film and not think of George W. Bush, the man who beat Gore in 2000. Bush has been studiously anti-science, a man of applied ignorance who has undernourished his mind with the empty calories of comfy dogma. For instance, his insistence on abstinence as the preferred method of birth control would be laughable were it not so reckless. It is similar to Bush's initial approach to global warming. It may be that Gore will do more good for his country and the world with this movie than Bush ever did by winning in 2000.
Gore insists his presidential aspirations are behind him. "I think there are other ways to serve," he told me. No doubt. But on paper, he is the near-perfect Democratic candidate for 2008. He won the popular vote in 2000. He opposed going to war in Iraq, but he supported the previous Gulf War - right both times. He is much more a person of the 21st century than most of the other potential candidates. Gore could be a great President. First, he has to be a good candidate.
In the meantime, he is a man on a mission. Wherever he goes, he finds time and an audience to deliver his (free) lecture on global warming. It and the film leave no doubt of the peril we face and neither do they leave any doubt that Gore, at last, is a man at home in his role. He is master teacher, pedagogue, know-it-all, smarter than most of us, better informed and, having tried for and failed to gain the presidency, has raised his sights to save the world. We simply cannot afford for Al Gore to lose again.
In the future, things will be either warmer or cooler than they have at certain times in the past.
That's pretty much the level of "prediction" these folks are capable of, and it doesn't surprise me how many liberals believe in psychic abilities, or who feel "a special connection" to animals, and suspect UFOs are alien space jallopies.
Liberal are "in touch" with nature, which is one of their "special abilities" which makes them "different" and thus outcasts in the world of people who are too busy with paying bills and bringing up kids to think about such cosmic things.
Libs and New Agers are different only in that most libs don't admit their true, kooky feelings.
Written by Richard Cohen of the Washington Compost, long time Democrat suck-pump.
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