Guns, Global Warming and Gore: Irony on display

My first post in the New Year covers a number of interesting items that I’ve noticed receiving too little coverage in the past few days.

Guns: Despite what the general public is led to believe by media coverage (perception is not necessarily reality folks) rifles, including the faux military rifles, are used to kill fewer people yearly than either hammers or hands.  Don’t believe me?  Check with the FBI.

While any number of murders is too many, I hear no calls to ban the real killing tools, hammers and the hands that wield them.

Global Warming: Earlier this week the Wall Street Journal (and Matt Ridley) did everyone favor once again by publishing important news that other news sources – one would presume because it violates their bias – didn’t touch.  The news: the forthcoming report by supposedly the one and only authoritative body speaking on climate change, the U.N.s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, estimates that future warming due to human causes will be approximately half their most recent predictions and much lower than the amount of warming predicted in IPCC’s first three reports.  According to the IPCC a doubling of CO2 will lead to a warming of just 2.9 to 3.1 ⁰F, significantly lower than the 5.4 to nearly 7 degree warming most recently estimated.

This brings the IPCC’s estimates much closer in line with estimates made for the past few years by Virginia climate scientist Pat Michaels than their own previous estimates.  The more we learn – and follow the evidence not rhetoric, flawed models or altered data – the less we have to fear.

Gore: It seems that the former failed presidential candidate has found a new way to make money: BIG OIL!  Gore, who’s family originally made their money through wielding political power and growing tobacco, is perhaps best known as the world’s foremost (and highly publicized) climate alarmist.  Gore never met a fossil fuel, or fossil fuel company that he didn’t bemoan.  For Gore, oil companies were the Devil – paying shills to deny climate science.  Well the Devil may be a bad fellow and all, but evidently not bad enough that Gore wouldn’t get into bed with him and, more importantly, take his money.  Gore refused to sell his company flailing television station Current TV to Glenn Beck; too unsavory a character evidently.  Rather, he sold the company for $500,000,000 (with Gore pocketing $70,000,000 – $100,000,000) to Al Jazeera, a Qatar owned television station.  Where does the Al Jazeera get its funding?  From the oil rich Qatar government – more than half its revenue comes from oil — and the royal family.

Imagine that, Gore the planet’s champion taking filthy, oil-soaked, lucre.  Evidently the green of money trumps saving green mother nature.

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