I don’t think former Vice President Al Gore needs any introduction. However, to set the stage for this piece a snippet will be in the right direction. He is the failed politician who after his unsuccessful bid to become the president of United States switched profession into the environmental business as their chief prophet. His ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ has been so much discredited it’s not worth my effort to write on it; it is a job for smart children. However, I am going to concentrate on his hypocrisy and falsification of evidence, which he draws copiously from his goddess Rachel Carson. You would expect that if he is really serious about global warming, or believes what he preaches the assumption is that he will practice exactly what he pontificates from his religious environmental pulpit. Rather his actions are akin to the phrase – do as I say, but not as I do. For the environmental left, global warming has become a religion and anybody who does not subscribe to their creed is a sinner. They attack people who criticise their beliefs savagely and say things that even borders on psychosis. I once read a blogger who claimed that Freeman Dyson is not a serious scientist simply because he doesn’t sing their tune. Instead of them to deal with the questions he raises they attack him childishly. Freeman Dyson, not a serious scientist? Give me a break! On the other hand, they will rather sing the praise and subscribe to the unvarnished stupidity of Noam Avram Chomsky.

After the release of his documentary ‘An Inconvenient Truth’, which does not actually qualify for that category, because it is complete fiction, the Tennessee Centre for Policy Research conducted a home energy audit on Al Gore. What they came up with is revealing. The year culled for their analysis showed that the average consumer in America consumed 10,656 kilowatt hours of energy per year. However, according to Tennessee utilities bills records Al Gore devoured 221,100kWh more than 20 times what the average American consumes. In addition, according to the records after the release of his fictitious science fiction drama his energy guzzling habit rather increased from 16,200kWh per month in 2005 to 18400kWh in 2006. You would also expect from someone who makes so much noise about global warming to be less extravagant. It is reported that he has a beach house close to the ocean, which he has not denied ever since the story broke. For someone who thinks that global warming is going to cause sea levels to rise is very strange. This goes to show that he doesn’t believe a thing of what he is stuffing his unsuspecting audience and admirers. Contrary to what I have said, Mr Kwarteng will come up with a rebuttal that TCPR is a right wing organisation out to get Al Gore. But you don’t have to take their word for it. Utility bills in Tennessee are public record. For those in America you can easily access it; you don’t have to swallow what Tennessee Centre for Policy Research tells you.

In ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ he lashed out at air travel and advised that businessmen should consider telecommuting instead. However, there is ample evidence that Al Gore travels on private jets, which emits about sixteen times more carbon dioxide per passenger than travelling as a 1st class passenger on Boeing 747 or Airbus 380.

Al Gore presented his film as scientific and it should be treated as such. In the discipline of science when there is more than 5% chance of an alternative explanation you cannot conclusively articulate that the cause of a problem or phenomenon is predicated exclusively on ‘A’. Besides, you are duty bound to mention the other possibilities. The death of the polar bears he presented in his film as being caused by global warming was complete fabrication. He said in the film that, ‘a new scientific study show that, for the first time, polar bears have been drowning in significant numbers.’ He deliberately presented that falsehood to support the reason for the death of the polar bears in his movie when he knew that they might have died from windstorm. If he wanted the film to be classified as scientific then he should have made that evidence known to his viewers, but he didn’t. Strangely, the scientific study he mentioned only recorded the death of four polar bears. The same overkill was adopted by Rachel Carson in her book ‘Silent Spring’ when she mentioned the death of a worker who died after pouring a solution of Chlordane on himself. As tragic as that incident was she failed to mention the enormity of the quantity involved. The chlordane solution that killed the worker contained 25 pounds of chlordane 39 pounds of solvent and 10 pounds of emulsifier. Even water, at some point, can become fatal if you drink too much of it.

A second point will be enough to suffice my piece. Al Gore stated in ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ that, ‘low-lying inhabited Pacific atolls are being inundated because of anthropogenic global warming.’ He further added, ‘that is why the citizens of these Pacific nations have all had to evacuate to New Zealand.’ This was classic shameless falsehood, but don’t take my word for it. A school governor in England took her Majesty’s government to court over the use of ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ in the classroom. The judge ruled in his favour. Among his summation he ruled that there is no evidence of any such evacuation having yet happened. It is very safe to conclude that Al Gore completely fabricated that evidence in his fictitious science fiction drama, which he passed it off as a scientific documentary. These are the liars that Mr Kwarteng falls for – people who don’t care what their actions does to other people so long as it advances their cherished twisted dreams.

Now, I can go on endlessly on his hypocrisy and falsification of evidence, but there are more important issues at stake than that. Al Gore recommends the use of renewable technologies like wind mill, solar, ethanol and what have you, which are not reliable sources of energy. And when it comes to ethanol it can be deadly, and can be harmful to the environment. For this piece I am going to concentrate on the use of ethanol as a renewable option to power motor vehicles compared to fossil fuel in energy output. A gallon of petrol generates 115,000 BTUs of energy, and that of ethanol is 75,000 BTUs. Therefore, to get equivalent energy output you need to fire one and half more of ethanol, which actually defeats the notion of reducing green house gas. Besides, the production of ethanol is not efficient compared to petrol. With petrol, once the ‘black gold’ is found you just have to pump it up from the ground, refine it and then distribution. In the case of ethanol, much intensive regime is required through planting, growing, weeding, harvesting, fermentation, distillation and distribution. The absurdity is mind boggling, because the tractors used for the planting and harvesting are powered by diesel. Quite a few ethanol distillation plants use coal as their source of energy. The trucks used for the distribution of the final products use fossil fuel, which is diesel. So, effectively, by the time a gallon of ethanol reaches your tank it would have consumed significant amount of fossil fuel on its way. According to the available statistics by David Pimentel of Cornell University, ethanol from corn uses 29% more fossil fuel than it replaces. That of ethanol is favourable compared to other biofuel. Switchgrass consumes 45%, wood biomass 57% and biodiesel from sunflower burns a whopping 118% than it replaces. Therefore, to use one gallon of ethanol is equivalent to burning two gallon of petrol. Anyway this is professor Pimentel’s assessment and you can disagree with the numbers. On the other hand, you cannot use the land for planting ethanol corn to plant corn for human consumption. The increasing use of corn for biofuel has caused substantial rise in the prices of corn on the world market affecting the poor who uses greater part of the income on food. Don’t take my word for it; there has been tortilla riot in Mexico already as a result of that. This is the end product of the actions of people who claim they are for the poor.

Despite the above stated case against the use of ethanol – a phenomenon which rather harms the environment, because in order to meet the demand for ethanol, in addition to providing for human consumption, virgin lands needs to be cleared for the purpose. And we know that virgin forests are more efficient at trapping carbon dioxide than any method currently known. Yet, this is what the darlings of the left – Hillary Clinton and Obama advocate. On her campaign trail in 2007 she was unequivocal on her support for ethanol. She lauded Iowa for the progress they have achieved in the production of ethanol and commended them for setting the pace. However, anybody who follows Hillary Clinton’s political carrier can joggle their memory back to 2002 during a senate hearing. She said, ‘we are providing a single industry with a guarantee market for its products - subsidies on top of subsidies on top of subsidies and, on top of that, protection from liability – what a sweet heart deal.’ What changed in between is that Clinton in 2007 was running for President and she needed the votes of the Iowa farmers. In 2002 she realised that it was a sweetheart deal for oppressive capitalist bosses, but when she needed the votes of the majority of the people of Iowa who were connected to that industry it was alright. Think seriously about what any leftist politician tells you. I am not going to write anymore about the hypocrisy and stupidity of these leftist politicians and prophets of doom, but keep your fingers crossed for my defence of capitalism. Thank you very much.


Philip Kobina Baidoo Jnr
London
baidoo_philip@yahoo.co.uk