Al Gore and the Great Debate: Will He or Won't He?

The notion of remaining silent is not one readily associated with Al Gore. But, by his steadfast, years-long refusal to do anything other than pontificate about his views, such as defend them in an exchange with anyone who might know what they’re talking about, he does seem to be adopting some form of the adage “Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak out and remove all doubt”.

So, today the Competitive Enterprise Institute has launched its Gore Debate Challenge. As CEI’s press release notes:

“For years, Al Gore has steadfastly refused to debate the global warming issue. Most recently, he ignored a put-up-or-shut-up challenge on the Glenn Beck Show from climate policy expert Lord Christopher Monckton, a former British government adviser. Today, the Competitive Enterprise Institute hopes to change all that with the release of a new video campaign. In it, CEI offers Mr. Gore a $500 check, together with the proceeds of a world-wide email pledge-a-dollar drive, all aimed at persuading Mr. Gore to accept Lord Monckton’s challenge.

“To our knowledge, Mr. Gore hasn’t been in a debate since he ran for president,” said Sam Kazman, CEI General Counsel. “But given that he and his allies are seeking the biggest tax increase in history in the form of new energy taxes and rationing, he ought to at least have to courage to engage in a face-to-face defense of his position,” Kazman stated.

CEI’s video debate challenge comes several weeks before a major United Nations conference on climate change in Copenhagen, which begins on December 7. Representatives from 192 countries are expected to attend that conference. Global warming alarmists hope to reach a new agreement to ratchet up international restrictions on energy use. The previous agreement, the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, expires in 2012.

At the same time, the US Congress is deliberating over major climate change legislation to set up a cap-and-tax carbon trading scheme.

View on-going commentary on climate policy at GlobalWarming.org.”

C’mon, Al. Too divine for divinity school, we know. Now, reveal to the world that the reason the legal training was similarly interrupted was that there simply was no need. It’s past time you showed us once and for all that, even though Her Majesty’s Government went 0-for11 in the Dimmock case trying to defend your bombastic claims – including the premise, that ice core data shows that CO2 drives warming, when in fact the literature shows it is precisely the other way around, which you surely knew – you can do a better job than those government barristers with their powdered wigs and fancy licenses.

You see, word is getting around that, despite all of the claims that “the science is settled” as a way to move on and avoid the horrors of debate, no one has ever identified when it was settled, or what settled it. Now’s your chance. Let’s settle things, once and for all. We have eleven months and, this way, the 2010 “Kyoto Elections” will be resounding and conclusive in their result. A climate change mandate! At last.

Come on. Do it. Now, make it the turn of those who disagree with you to look the fool.