Refusing Debate

Bonner R. Cohen, senior fellow at the National Center for Public Policy Research, has an op-ed up over at TCS Daily wondering why Al Gore will not debate his global warming beliefs with actual experts. Not just one or to times, but every, single time debate is offered.

Czech President Vaclav Klaus, who addressed the General Assembly on climate change September 24, is but the latest global warming skeptic to receive the cold shoulder from Gore. In ads appearing in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and Washington Times, Klaus has called on Gore to face him in a one-on-one debate on the proposition: "Global Warming Is Not a Crisis." Earlier in the year, similar challenges to Gore were issued by Dennis Avery, director of the Center for Global Food Issues and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, and Lord Monckton of Brenchley, a former adviser to British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. All calls on the former vice president to face his critics have fallen on deaf ears.

The Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based free-market think tank, launched the debate campaign in April, using ads, press releases, and other tactics to prod Gore into confronting those who reject his alarmist views on global warming.

For his part, President Klaus has not minced words on what he sees as the real agenda of those promoting climate hysteria. In an op-ed in the Financial Times (June 13, pointedly titled "Freedom, Not Climate, is at Risk," Klaus said: "Let us not scare ourselves with catastrophic forecasts, or use them to defend and promote irrational interventions in human lives." Arguing that the issue of global warming "is more about social than about natural sciences and more about man and his freedom than about tenths of a degree Celsius changes in average global temperature," Klaus rejected the notion of a "scientific consensus" on climate change as an effort by a "loud minority" to impose its will on a "silent majority."

Al Gore, who has a substantial financial stake in promoting global warming, since he will get very rich of his investments if the world embraces his theory, is taking a pass on talking to anyone who does not fawn over his pronouncements. And really, that should not be a surprise. Gore promotes alternative fuels - which not only do not work - but actually make things worse. In fact, Jane Goodall just publicly denounced the biofuel craze as bad for the planet. But his sycophants keep pushing Gore's agenda. One which has nothing - whatsoever - with actually saving the planet. His refusal to debate proves that.