The world has become such a difficult and dangerous place that I am deeply appreciative of recent amusing events, which seem as if they were written by the Marx Brothers or Monty Python. I have in mind, it should go without saying, Al Gore winning both an Academy Award and the Nobel Peace Prize. The very sentence sounds like a punch line. But I can’t quite figure out who is supposed to be the butt of the joke.
Couldn’t have said it better myself!
This Tony Blankley piece goes on to do the nearly impossible: he makes the so-called “carbon offset” clearly understandable as the ineffective, meaningless scam that it is.
Before reviewing Gore’s various inanities that won him the Nobel, it is worth taking a look at one of his related projects: carbon offsets. As chairman and founder of Generation Investment Management, a firm that purchases carbon dioxide offsets, Gore stands to profit further from what he sees as mankind’s misery  which is OK by me. I’m glad to see he finally has developed the capitalist instinct (like his dad did with Occidental Petroleum and Armand Hammer).
But carbon offsets are a rather strange concept. Let me use a simple metaphor to explain it: Let’s suppose that Al Gore goes to an Italian restaurant and eats a loaf of garlic bread, a plate of lasagna, a bowl of spaghetti and meatballs, an extra-large pizza with seven toppings, a couple bottles of Chianti and a large assortment of pastries. As a result, he puts on 10 pounds. But he is deeply concerned that mankind is getting too fat. So he pays 10 peasants in Asia $10 each to eat nothing for a week. Although they are already thin, by starving themselves for a week, they each lose a pound. As a result, after a week, mankind is weight neutral. Al Gore weighs 10 pounds more, 10 Asians weigh 10 pounds less  and Al Gore is given another Nobel Peace Prize for his leadership in keeping mankind’s waistline in check.
Yowch!
To get down to the Nobel nitty-gritty:
But Al Gore’s carbon offset shuffle is small potatoes, as it were. His great accomplishment is to have shared the Nobel Peace Prize with the thousands of scientists of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change  while contradicting their scientific findings.
There’s more relevant supporting science in the piece…check it out for yourself…
…and yet even more Gore, this time from former political apparatchik and current talking head Dick Morris:
If the bumper sticker of ’92 and ’96 (Clinton-Gore) divides, and we find Gore running against Hillary Clinton, Al Gore could not only beat the former First Lady for the Democratic nomination, he could win the presidency….Al Gore  the newly minted Nobel laureate  could steal the nomination from Hillary’s well-oiled machine.
This is both good and bad. To repeat the bad:
“…he could win the presidency.”
Sheesh! That’s a chilling thought.
Do you really think Hillary would allow Gore to attempt to get the nomination when she seem to have it wrapped up, and has a good chance not a great chance of winning it all.
If global warming was as important at the Goreites and others say it is why do carbon credits in the first place?