He asked for the President; he got the Cubslayer.

Gore coming to Va. for Deeds

Former Vice President Al Gore will be coming to Virginia on Friday to give a last-minute boost to the Democratic candidate for governor, Creigh Deeds, a party source said.

Gore will headline a private fundraiser in McLean at the home of longtime Democratic supporters Al and Claire Dwoskin.

But surely this doesn’t necessarily mean…

Obama in Virginia, But Not For Deeds

President Obama is in Fairfax County today.

But not to campaign for Democratic gubernatorial candidate Creigh Deeds.

Snap!

Instead, Obama visits the Fairfax County Parkway extension today with Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood to talk about federal stimulus spending.

Ah.

Well.

Moe Lane

PS: Bob McDonnell for Governor.

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

A. By getting the microphone cut off, of course. Via Breitbart TV and the B-Cast:

For the record, I find the sight of Big Green shills stomping on the free speech of an independent whistleblower - yes, that was fun to write; thanks for asking - to be just a sign that they themselves know that they’re having problems pushing their agenda these days. When even the BBC’s no longer a reliable stenographer (H/T: AoSHQ), well…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to Moe Lane.

What’s the most laughably outlandish angle of this story?

• That the U.S. Government is loaning Nobel laureate Al Gore and investment bank Kleiner Perkins $529 million to build a car, and -
• It’s a hybrid electric sports model, and -
• It will cost $89,000 a copy, and -
• It will be made in Finland.

We’re also loaning Tesla Motors $465 million to build a $109,000 British electric roadster. That’s almost a cool billion, and it’s going to well-heeled Democratic contributors.

WSJ: Gore-Backed Car Firm Gets Large U.S. Loan

The awards to Fisker and Tesla have prompted concern from companies that have had their bids for loans rejected, and criticism from groups that question why vehicles aimed at the wealthiest customers are getting loans subsidized by taxpayers.

“This is not for average Americans,” said Leslie Paige, a spokeswoman for Citizens Against Government Waste, an anti-tax group in Washington. “This is for people to put something in their driveway that is a conversation piece. It’s status symbol thing.”

Not everyone who has applied has walked away with such generous backing:

Some companies that have been turned down for loans from DOE say they did not get much feedback from the department about their applications. O. John Coletti, president of EcoMotors International of Troy, Mich., said his company applied for a $20 million loan from the agency last December, and last month got a one-page rejection letter from the loan program’s director, Lachlan Seward. EcoMotors’ lead investor is Vinod Khosla, himself a former Kleiner Perkins partner and a longtime campaign contributor to Republicans and Democrats alike. …

Scott Redmond, CEO of XP Vehicles Inc., said he met with DOE officials twice in Washington after applying for a $40 million loan to develop a $15,000 to $25,000 hybrid, and that both times he was told his application looked good. Since receiving a rejection letter from DOE in August, Redmond said, he has been unable to get a full explanation as to why his request was turned down.

H/T The Daily Beast

Since the 1930’s, Louisiana has lost over 2,000 square miles to coastal erosion - an area larger than the state of Delaware. Stabilizing the remaining marshlands requires massive projects, such as plantings, erosion control structures and mass plantings, but more than anything it requires masses of money.

Governor Bobby Jindal thinks he knows who might help foot the bill: you and me, pal, if Cap and Tax gets passed.

It turns out that projects for rebuilding marsh and the delta will score all kinds of points in the Carbon Offset game. If someone wants to build, say, a coal-fired electrical generation plant, they will be required under the Waxman-Markey abomination to purchase Carbon Credits from a “qualified project”.

Scientists working with Louisiana to develop a carbon-credit plan say the river delta is a factor in the greenhouse gas equation. They say the 2,000 square miles of Louisiana marshland lost since 1932 is equivalent to the carbon output of 80 million automobiles driving for one year.

So, you’re looking to keep driving that Suburban? Or using coal-based electricity? We in Louisiana are here to help.

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Scott Armstrong of the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania is co-author of a paper which was presented to the International Symposium on Forecasting in June. The conclusion: “The paper explained the need for simple methods and conservative forecasts in the face of uncertainty and complexity and pointed out that simple no-change benchmark forecasts are sufficiently accurate for policy decisions. In contrast, simple causal models with CO2 as the policy variable are not credible.”

Prediction markets for temperatures in three and ten years time agree that the no-change forecast is the more likely outcome than the IPCC 0.03C per annum forecast. Finally, similar (analogous) alarms in the past identified by the authors and others turned out to be false alarms. The slides for the talk are available as a PowerPoint file and as a PDF file.

In layman’s terms, Armstrong et al conclude that if you had to bet what the temperature will be in ten years, “the same as today” is a more accurate than any scientific model. And the no-change model is the one they recommend using for climate change policy.

This sounds absurd! Why, there is a well-known Scientific Consensus on man-made global warming! Do you think they’re wrong? Then here’s your chance to make some easy money: The Climate Bet.

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Mark Steyn, with a little of the class warfare, particularly as it applies to global warming aristos. Or should that be theocrats? I’m not really an expert in research theology.

One assumes Gar Smith is sincere in his fetishization of bucolic African poverty, with its vibrantly rampant disease and charmingly unspoilt life expectancy in the mid-forties. But when a hereditary prince starts attacking capitalism and pining for the days when a benign sovereign knew what was best for the masses, he gives the real game away. Capitalism is liberating: You’re born a peasant but you don’t have to die one.

You can work hard and get a nice place in the suburbs. If you were a 19th-century Russian peasant and you got to Ellis Island, you’d be living in a tenement on the Lower East Side, but your kids would get an education and move uptown, and your grandkids would be doctors and accountants in Westchester County. And your great-grandchild would be a Harvard-educated environmental activist demanding an end to all this electricity and indoor toilets.

Environmentalism opposes that kind of mobility. It seeks to return us to the age of kings, when the masses are restrained by a privileged elite.

…you know, I think that Al Gore would probably seriously groove to being able to hierophant out with a staff, miter, and long, flowing robes. No, not one made out of hemp: didn’t you hear? Secondhand smoke kills.

Moe Lane

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Recent admissions of extramarital affairs by Mark Sanford and John Ensign resulted in heavy media coverage and constant generalizations about Republicans’ hypocrisy concerning family values.  The mainstream media’s fascination with GOP affairs is likely fueled, not by a desire to “get” Republicans, but by a worldview that makes it difficult to view those who preach conservative social values as sincere. That said, it’s fair for the media to highlight hypocrisy.  I just wish the MSM applied a more bipartisan standard to hypocrisy, such as when sensitivity-preaching Democrats make racially insensitive remarks (e.g., Joe Biden), pro-labor liberals shaft their workers (e.g., Al Franken), or self-righteous greens contribute far more than their share to mankind’s carbon footprint (e.g., Al Gore).  Instead, the opposite rule seems to apply: a politician’s history of liberal rhetoric is taken as evidence that no harm was intended by what would otherwise be viewed as hypocritical behavior.

Cross-posted at Politico.

At the turn of the 20th century, the experts believed that Physics was a settled science. We were either at a solution, or very close to one. There was simply nothing new to learn in physics, was the consensus. As soon as the loose ends were tied up, our understanding of the universe would be complete.

Then light acted up. Oops. Physics is still reeling from the relativistic and quantum effects discovered since.

Likewise, we’ve been told that climate science is settled. It’s a consensus. Shut up. Man-made effects will be magnified by oceanic currents, and the world is doomed.

Then the ocean acted up. Oops. It turns out that not only was our model of the ocean vastly oversimplified and our predictions on its behavior were wrong, but researchers believe the correct oceanic currents may be more difficult even to reach and study.

It sounds to me like every climactic model has to be rewritten, and if it were an honest science, it’d be reeling for some time. As one commenter at Slashdot put it, “Who would have ever guessed that we would have trouble forming an accurate model of a vast, complex, chaotic system?”

Not Al Gore. He was more interested in generating a good crisis, than in publishing a true representation of science.

Promoted from the diaries by Skanderbeg.  Do be sure to read down to the tabulation of the incipient green oligopoly that’s trying to coalesce around all this “AGW” nonsense….

After the “global warming” terminology morphed into “climate change”, the EPA dedicated a large section of their website to the issue. With EPA now able to provide the comprehensive information, the challenge to curtail “climate change” is now up to the Obama Administration.

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A lot of money. As in, his net worth has increased fifty-fold, and that’s not a typo. Gateway Pundit revisits some commentary by Pro Patria about Al Gore’s relationship with Big Green (a good name, that):

So just what has Al Gore gained from his Big Green escapades? According to public disclosure information, Gore was worth somewhere between $1 million and $2 million in 2000. Not quite eight years later, Gore is estimated to be worth somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 million. While I ordinarily would applaud such financial gains from such a short period of time, I can’t help but to question just how it happened. When you look out at what Al Gore has done, it’s evident that he figured out on a way to capitalize on the creation of Big Green while becoming the official doomsday prophet that has helped to build Big Green into the monetary powerhouse that it has become.

That post is from 2007, and the number it mentions was also reported here and here (neither unsympathetically, which is the reason why they were chosen): Gateway Pundit is bringing it up again because Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) had some pointed questions to Mister Gore on his business relationships. Human Events had ten more, all of which should be asked by his supporters themselves, and none of which will be.  Note that Blackburn did ask some of these questions; also note that Gore evaded them, complete with that patented “the fools denied my greatness!  But I’ll show them!  I’ll show them ALL!” smirk that he reserves for situations like this.  I have to admit; if this is Gore’s revenge scenario for America it’s going well.

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Video Below Fold

It is always interesting to see the Democratic pot calling the Republican kettle black and here we have only the latest example of that with Obama’s top advisor attacking former Vice President Dick Cheney for his outspoken position on the failures of the Obama administration’s early efforts in office. But, even as advisor David Axelrod was attacking Cheney, there didn’t seem to be any memory on the part of CNN or Axelrod of the wild-eyed, fire-breathing attacks made by former Vice President Al Gore on President George W. Bush in the years after the 2000 election.

On CNN’s State of the Union with host John King, David Axelrod scolded Dick Cheney for not behaving like a “statesman” over the former vp’s statements that the country is becoming less safe because of Obama’s policies.

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Via Hot Air, I see that notorious, bloodthirsty polar bear-murderer Al Gore is up to his usual environmental violations - take that any way you like - in the pursuit of his destructive lifestyle:

Drew Johnson, president of the Tennessee Center for Policy Research —the same organization that also found Gore’s home consumes 20 times more electricity than the average household — told Yeas & Nays that Gore’s Belle Meade-section mansion did not go dark during the global campaign’s designated hour between 8:30 p.m. and 9:30 p.m.

Johnson did admit that although it wasn’t as bright as can be, Gore did have on “a dozen or so” floodlights on his trees, a light shining on his address number, and a noticeable “bluish glow” from his powered-on televisions and computers coming from inside his house.

That bluish glow was probably actually Cerenkov radiation: Gore’s just the sort of Gaia-denying hypocrite to have a secret nuclear reactor in his basement. After all, a man who’d have a kill rating of four millibears a year from his personal lifestyle alone can’t be trusted at all.  Besides, as the photo to the side shows, he’s not even willing to turn off the light that shows his street address.  As if any one in the area could miss it, what with the unholy glow of his profligate energy potlach obscuring the clean, night-time Tennessee sky.

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