RUSH: As is always the case, we have a burgeoning and growing stack of global warming information, ladies and gentlemen. So it is time for a global warming update. Paul Shanklin portrays Algore.
(Playing of Ball of Fire spoof song.)
That’s Algore, Ball of Fire, takeoff on Johnny Cash, Ring of Fire. Paul Shanklin, the vocal portrayal there of the ecowarrior Algore. Last week I made mention of the fact to you that the president of Czechoslovakia, Václav Klaus, was saying this global warming thing is just a new branch of communism. He’s in Washington. He told US Representative Joe Barton of Texas, a Republican, and the former speaker Dennis Hastert on Monday, today, ‘It becomes evident that while discussing climate, we are not witnessing a clash of views about the environment. We are witnessing a clash of views about human freedom.’ He is exactly right, as I have been trying to warn everybody.
Global warming is not about science, it’s not about saving the planet, it’s about taking away people’s freedom and getting them to go along with it on the basis of guilt, the fact that they have sinned in destroying the climate and killing the polar bears so you’ll give up your freedom, make modifications in your guilty lifestyle, raise taxes that you will pay, gladly so just to feel better about yourselves. ‘As someone who lived under communism for most of my life, I feel obliged to say that the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy, and prosperity at the beginning of the twenty-first century is not communism or its various softer variants. Communism was replaced by threat of ambitious environmentalism.’ Well, lo and behold. I have been saying this since the early nineties, a giant See, I Told You So.
I have been saying, and you people who have been around regularly know it, that militant environmentalism is the new home of displaced communists. It’s where they have taken refuge. ‘This so-called climate change and especially manmade climate change has become one of the most dangerous arguments aimed at distorting human efforts and public policies in the whole world. Now, the House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold further hearings about global warming on Wednesday, and one of the lead witnesses will be the former vice president Al Gore.’ Now, Matt Drudge somehow got hold of some questions being bandied about for Algore. You know what Gore is going to do? He’s going to pull a Valerie Plame. ‘Well, congressman, I am not a lawyer, I don’t know –’ and Gore will go up there and say, ‘Well, Senator, I’m not a scientist. Really isn’t an issue of science. It’s a moral issue,’ which is what he said at the Academy Awards.
Anyway, this is John Dingell’s committee, and John Dingell, Democrat, Michigan, he’s chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, Gore is going to go over to Boxer’s environment and public works committee in the afternoon in the Senate, and they’re going to have overflow seating and they’re going to have protesters for and against Gore. Gore is going to get a 30-minute opening and then Boxer and Republican counterpart, Senator James Inhofe each get 15 minutes of questioning, in addition to their opening statements. Other Senators will only get five minutes of Q&A. One thing about Dingell, he’s a Democrat, but he’s a big global warming skeptic, because his district in Detroit encompasses the automakers. They’re the ones that are in the first line of attack because, of course, they are producing the most destructive elements of our civilization that cause global warming.
I got a story here. Get this. ‘The EPA says the world’s termites emit 20,000 kilotons of methane gas per year, almost as much as all of the United States’ manmade methane emissions combined.’ Termites. And now cows and steers, cattle and so forth. This is EPA saying this, not me. Here’s some of the questions for Algore that have been circulating behind the scenes, Drudge says. ‘Mr. Gore, you said several times we have ten years to act to stave off global warming. Was that ten years from the first time you said that, or ten years from now? Just wanted to get a firm date from you that we can hold you to.’
‘Mr. Gore, how can you continue to claim global warming on the earth is primarily caused by mankind when other planets — Mars, Jupiter, and Pluto — with no confirmed life forms and certainly no manmade industrial greenhouse gas emissions are also showing signs of global warming? Wouldn’t it make more sense that the sun might be responsible here for warming, since it’s the common denominator?’
‘Mr. Gore, Joseph Raum, the executive director for the center for energy examine climate solutions has said that we have to build 700 large nuclear plants to stave off climate change. Where do you stand on the need for nuclear energy?’
Václav Klaus, though, the big story, basically confirming that this is nothing more than a new refuge, the environmentalism, new refuge for displaced communists.